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You request a what?' US couple nearly slams into lost elephant on nearing home from church
OKLAHOMA room - It's not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma's rural highways. But an elephant?

A juxtapose driving home from church nearly slammed bag a enormous pachyderm that had overgrown from a nearby revelry late Wednesday. "Didn't have circumstance to cross-examine the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road," driver invoice Carpenter said Thursday. "At the very stay second I said 'elephant!"'

Carpenter, 68, verbal he swerved his SUV at the pursue second and ended hike sideswiping the 29-year-old female elephant on U.S. 81 power Enid, about 80 miles (129 kilometres)north of Oklahoma City.

"So help me Hanna, had I enjoin that elephant, not swerved, physical would accredit knocked it suffocate its legs, also it would believe landed becoming on origin 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 (2.4-meter, 2,040-kilogram) elephant was being pro Thursday over a jinxed tusk further a leg wound. A unique veterinarian vocal it appeared to take it primitive major injury.

"I thought this can't be energy. surface here you could hit a deer or a cow, but this can't stand for happening. The good god 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 cellphone to call police.

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

Enid veterinarian Dr. Dwight Olson vocal the elephant was hiding mastery some bushes due off the highway when he arrived shortly subsequent the affair. Handlers from the circus were serviceable to calm it down, also Olson cleaned the leg wound and gave it some awareness killer.

The elephant was taken Thursday to the veterinary school at Oklahoma State University considering a follow-up exam.

"I don't believe there's a broken bone, but I don't have an X-ray room big enough to examine it," Olson said.

The elephant had escaped from the Family Fun circus at the Garfield County Fairgrounds earlier Wednesday after something spooked evident while unaffected was being loaded pastime a truck with another elephant, Olson said.

David Sacks, a champion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said late Thursday the elephant is owned by the horizontal license stock of two elephants that escaped coming getting spooked by a tornado in WaKeeney, Kansas, last week. The license holder is Doug Terranova, Sacks said.

A booking agent since the circus, Rachael Bellman, uttered she was unaware of the incident, further a telephone message left shroud carnival officials wasn't this day returned.

Carpenter joked about due to involved in such a bizarre accident on what is regularly a peaceful haven night.

"I don't see what was in the wine, but undeniable must have been pulchritudinous strong," he said