'You hit a what?' SUV nearly slams into elephant

'You hit a what?' SUV nearly slams into elephant
November 10, 2009 16:33 PM

OKLAHOMA CITY -- It's not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma's rural highways. But an elephant?

An Oklahoma couple driving home church nearly slammed into a giant pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.

"Didn't have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road," driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. "At the very last second I said 'elephant!"'

Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his SUV at the last second and ended up sideswiping the 29-year-old female Asian elephant on U.S. 81 in Enid, about 80 miles north of Oklahoma City.

"So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us," he said. "We'd have been history."

The couple, who own a wheat farm, weren't injured. But the 8-foot, 4,500-pound elephant was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.

"I thought this can't be happening. Out here you could hit a deer or a cow, but this can't be happening. The good Lord was with us," Carpenter said. The elephant's tusk punched through the side of the SUV, tearing up sheet metal.

After sideswiping the elephant, his wife, Deena, flagged some people down and used their cell phone to call police.

"The dispatcher didn't believe her: 'You hit a what?"' he said. "I told my wife, I don't know whether to cry or laugh."

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