SUV has close encounter with elephant on the run

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 the giant animal, which had escaped from a nearby circus late on Wednesday.

"Didn't have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road," driver Bill Carpenter said on 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 US 81 in Enid, about 129 kilometres 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 2.4-metre, 2,040-kilogramme elephant was being examined on Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.