Got your nose! Or trunk, that is.
An elephant at the Mfuwe Lodge in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia got an unwanted surprise while going for a drink, and 62-year-old Ian Salisbury was there to capture the moment on his camera.
Salisbury’s photos show the exact moment when an unsuspecting elephant reached its trunk into one of the park’s watering hole and was instead came face-to-face with a hungry crocodile. Fortunately the elephant was able to quickly pull its trunk free of the reptile’s jaws.
The scene was reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s classic short story “The Elephant’s Child.” In the tale, the “Jungle Book” author explains how elephants’ trunks came to be so long, telling of a young and curious elephant whose nose is bitten, and stretched out, by a crocodile.