Saba Douglas-Hamilton, conservationist, filmmaker and TV presenter, grew up in Kenya with her father Iain Douglas-Hamilton—founder of nonprofit organization Save the Elephants.

Douglas-Hamilton grew up alongside elephants, meaning she is no stranger to their presence. But interacting with the wild animals has presented its fair share of hairy moments, including one when a huge bull elephant nearly trod on her.

While usually gentle creatures, bull elephants can be aggressive, particularly during musth—a rise in reproductive hormones that is characterized with hyper-aggressive behavior.

Douglas-Hamilton had been working on a documentary at the time in Namibia. She told Newsweek that she had been sleeping outside, under the stars, when the bull elephant approached.

“I pulled my mattress out into the middle of the riverbed like I had been doing night after night. Didn’t even think about it and fell asleep under the stars and I was coming awake every now and then, hearing elephants, checking the trees and eating. I was thinking gosh, isn’t that lovely? Elephants all around how lucky am I,” Douglas-Hamilton said. “And then I suddenly woke up very wide awake. Must have been one or two o’clock in the morning and I saw this huge bull elephant walking majestically along the edge of the riverbank about [160 feet] away from me in parallel to me and lit up in the moon and I thought my goodness, isn’t that so beautiful? […] And then he turned around and he peered out at me through the darkness.”

Douglas-Hamilton suddenly realized that due to the full moon, the whole riverbed was lit up. The bull elephant knew the area very well and started wondering what she was.

It started walking towards her.

In Namibia, Douglas-Hamilton said the bull elephants did not have a good reputation and were known for being fierce. They have been known to go after people and damage vehicles in the past.

“He started walking towards me to come and investigate, this full grown bull elephant. I realised with a sinking heart that there was absolutely nothing I could do. There was nowhere to run. The sand was too deep. And if I’d started running that would have frightened him and probably ended in disaster. And there was no vegetation, that I could call up to get away. So I literally just had to lie there and play dead,” she said.

Douglas-Hamilton was certain the bull elephant would smell her at any moment.

“He came closer and closer and closer and my heart was racing and I thought my god, any minute he’s gonna smell me and he’s gonna realise that I’m human…I was waiting for him to kneel on me and crush me and slice his tusks through me, thinking these are my last minutes on Earth and I was petrified,” she said. “And instead he just reached out his trunk and he just very thoroughly sniffed me […] then he just walked away, and that is probably the most exciting elephant moment I’ve ever had in my life.”

Thanks to her upbringing, Douglas-Hamilton understands the poignancy of being a human amongst elephants. She addresses this during her speaking tour, In the Footsteps of Elephants, currently in the U.K.

During the 1970s, when she was growing up, the ivory trade was spiraling out of control. Scientists like her father were trying to draw attention to the situation.

Douglas-Hamilton said that all the elephants she grew up with had names—meaning she saw them as people and individuals.

Particular elephants remain in her family’s heart, including one named Virgo. Although she does not remember the incident herself, when Douglas-Hamilton was a baby her mother approached Virgo, holding her. Virgo reached out to sniff her, and then her own calf came forward.

“It was almost like these two mothers introducing their calves to each other,” Douglas-Hamilton said.

But during the ivory crisis, most of Virgo’s family was wiped out.

“Her life changed from that in the sense of man becoming a terrifying thing. Every time she came across a carcass of a dead relative it had the smell of man, the smell of man on leading from a hacked-off face where the ivory had been removed.”

Years later, Douglas-Hamilton and her family found Virgo again. The elephant appeared to remember them for a fleeting moment, before disappearing into the bush.

“My father said perhaps it’s best that she doesn’t trust mankind.”