OKLAHOMA CITY — It’s not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma’s rural highways. But an elephant? A couple driving home from church nearly slammed into a pachyderm 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 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 weren’t injured. But the 8-foot- tall, 4,500-pound elephant was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound.
