An Enid couple considered themselves lucky to be alive after a close encounter Wednesday night with an escaped circus elephant.

They also had a hard time convincing passers-by what had happened after the accident.

Bill Carpenter, a 68-year-old farmer, and his wife, Deena, were on their way home from church when their SUV side-swiped a 29-year-old, 8-foot, 4,500-pound female African elephant that had fled from the Family Fun Circus set up on the south side Garfield County Fair-grounds.

The Carpenters were returning home at 8:50 p.m. Wednesday, driving north in the inside lane of U.S. 81, when the elephant, Kamba, came southbound toward them.

“We got by P&K; John Deere (4121 N. U.S. 81 Bypass),” Carpenter said. “We were doing about 55, not speeding or anything. All the sudden I saw something running out in front of me. I thought, ‘What is that?’ I know it wasn’t a deer or a cow.”

Carpenter said he isn’t quite sure if he hit the elephant or if the elephant hit him.

“I thought this was wheat and cattle country but not elephant country,” he said.

The Carpenters are thanking God they lived through the accident.

“Had I not turned that wheel of the car extremely, which I did, we would have hit the elephant right in the legs and it would have come over the car and landed on us and we would have died,” Carpenter said. “The elephant ran right into the side of the car with it’s knee and tusk. The car was on two wheels and I whipped it back and it went on the other two wheels. Then I braked.

“It happened so fast. We give the Lord all the glory and credit for saving out lives. We are a walking miracle.”

The elephant was hard to see before the accident because it blended into the roadway, Carpenter said.

When he told his wife he saw an elephant, Deena said she replied, “What?”

“It’s not every day you hit an elephant,” she said. “I didn’t see it until we hit it. I looked to the left to where he was sitting and all I could see was this big body of an elephant, and of course it started tossing us.

“Afterwards my husband said he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”



‘We just hit an elephant’



Following the accident, Carpenter and his wife tried to warn other traffic of the elephant’s presence.

“I faced back south, toward town, and started flashing my lights at other oncoming traffic to slow them down,” Carpenter said.

His wife also tried to flag down a car to call the police to report the accident.

“She went out on the road to stop traffic, she forgot her cell phone. When we told them we hit an elephant, they thought we had been drinking or smoking something,” Carpenter said.

Deena said the drivers she stopped weren’t sure what to make of her story.

“I flagged down a driver. The first two didn’t stop. The third one did,” she said. “She asked me, ‘Are you hurt?’ I said, ‘Well, I hit my head’ and I said, ‘We just hit an elephant.’

“She said, ‘An elephant?’ and her husband said, ‘You mean a deer.’ I said, ‘I hit my head but it wasn’t that hard. I saw an elephant.’” said Deena.

The SUV’s front driver’s side fender is dented from the elephant’s knee and the elephant’s tusk punched through the side, tearing up sheet metal.

“The police and fire and rescue came. They were gracious and very kind. I asked, ‘Did we really hit an elephant?’” Carpenter said.

Following the accident, the elephant hid in a field off the roadway in some trees and brush. Handlers were able to subdue it and keep it chained until a semi-trailer truck could be brought in to transport it.



Injuries



The elephant suffered a broken tusk and a leg wound, along with some bumps, bruises and scratches.

Veterinarian Dr. Dwight Olson was called to possibly sedate the animal, if needed, and look at the animal’s wounds. According the accident report, the animal was not sedated and was walked into the trailer around 11:20 p.m.

“After they moved the elephant back to the fairgrounds I was able to examine it,” Olson said. “The tip of the left tusk was broken from the contact with the car. The left front leg had some bruising and swelling around the elbow. There was a scratch that was bleeding a little bit on the ankle and there was a scrape on the belly. There were some puncture wounds in various places from the barbed wire fence.”

Olson said he did not think the elephant’s leg was broken.

“It was bearing weight on the leg. It was moving it in normal position but there was quite bit of swelling around the elbow. I couldn’t take an X-ray. He wouldn’t fit in my X-ray room.”

According to The Asso-ciated Press, the elephant was taken to the veterinary school at Oklahoma State University for a follow-up exam. However, Derinda Lowe, coordinator of public relations, marketing and alumni affairs for OSU Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, would not comment Thursday, citing principles of veterinary medical ethics of the Ameri-can Veterinary Medical Asso-ciation.

“Veterinarians should not reveal confidences unless required to by law or unless it becomes necessary to protect the health and welfare of other individuals or animals,” Lowe said.

The elephant escaped after being spooked by lights and noise.

“It had gotten spooked,” Deena Carpenter said. “It was still spooked down there because it had taken the trainer and threw him against a tree and broke some ribs, and it took the fence and threw it up about 6 feet in the air.

“He (Douglas Terranova, owner of the elephant) said the trainer was putting it into a truck, and you’re not supposed to flash a light into an elephants eyes and he happened to do that and it spooked the elephant,” she said. “She just broke through the door and barreled out and took off.”

No one with Family Fun Circus, which contracts with others to provide animals for the circus, could be reached for comment Thursday. Terranova, an animal trainer, also could not be reached.

The group In Defense of Animals said in an e-mailed press release Kamba escaped from a circus in June 2008 in WaKenney, Kan., when she and another elephant were spooked during a storm and wandered through the town before they were recaptured.

IDA called for U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture to confiscate Terranova’s animals.