Elephant Story

(Enid, Oklahoma) A 4,500 lb. elephant escaped from the circus.

"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.

The elephant's tusk punched a hole into the SUV's sheet metal.