I was out alone during the middle of the day, doing routine maintenance checks on some of the roads in a remote area of the Kruger National Park. During my excursion I came across an area with an incredible number of elephants spread out over a wide area. I must have passed over a hundred elephants in a matter of four kilometres of driving. Eventually I managed to get through the many elephant traffic jams and continued ahead, with my work to do in mind. With all the elephants now behind me, I came around the corner and there was this one lone elephant cow standing in the middle of the road. She was just standing there looking at me. The female elephant’s behaviour had me puzzled a little, being alone and just standing there and not moving. That’s when it hit me what I was looking at. The elephant cow in front of me was standing on only three legs, with the fourth leg half way down amputated. I immediately realised she would find it hard to walk through the bush and quickly got out of her way, so she could proceed on the road with least resistance. The elephant slowly walked past my vehicle, looking very awkward in the way she moves forward. I could not help but to feel incredibly sad for this animal. On closer inspection I could clearly see that there was no blood or any fresh scars visible on the amputated leg. My sadness and shock turned into incredible admiration and respect for this animal. Looking at the amputated leg, it became clear to me that this animal most likely has been going like this for many years and purely survived by the protection of her herd members, even though she was lagging behind in the heat. Studying the footage later on, we came to the conclusion that this elephant most likely lost that part of her leg due to being caught in a snare at a much younger age in her life and incredibly healed naturally over time. This incident left me with a whole new different level of respect for the endurance and determination animals show to survive in the African wild.