Musth

The Taroos, or elephant catchers, having marked down a wild herd of 300 or 400 elephants, the following preparations are made. About 200 Taroos collect together, mounted upon elephants, and accompanied by two large "taking elephants," highly fed, and kept always musth, (sensual) and when in that state their ferocity is such, that no one but their keeper dares to approach them. […] The active little Taroos now slide down from their steeds, and under cover of one of the musth elephants, who pushes himself forcibly against the wild one selected from the herd, they, in a most dexterous and daring manner, slip the moosack on to each of the hind legs, which performance occupies about three minutes.

No animal in the world is so dangerous as an elephant in must.

I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed / That the Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.

I have seen men deal with enraged elephants and live; but never was man yet born of woman that met my lord the elephant in his musth and lived to tell of the taming.

Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the 'phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? […] It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone "must". It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of "must" is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped.

[T]he first officer told us about the musths. It is common knowledge among handlers that male elephants have periodic fits of madness and that they are extremely obstreperous and dangerous at these times. A male in such a condition is called a musth elephant.

At MalaMala we are charged by a bull elephant. The late sun reflecting on the moisture at his temporal gland shows he is in musth, and mad with lust, and we have inadvertently separated him from the breeding cows of his desire.