An Oklahoma couple driving home from church nearly rammed a pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.

"Didn't have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road," driver Bill Carpenter said yesterday. "At the very last second I said 'elephant!' "

Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his SUV at the last second but still sideswiped 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 yesterday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.

"I thought this can't be happening. Out here you could hit a deer or a cow, but this can't be happening. The good Lord was with us," Carpenter said. The elephant's tusk punched through the side of the SUV, tearing up sheet metal.

After sideswiping the elephant, Carpenter's wife, Deena, flagged some people down and used their cell phone to call police.

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

Enid veterinarian Dr. Dwight Olson said the elephant was hiding in some bushes just off the highway when he arrived shortly after the accident. Handlers from the circus were able to calm it down, and Olson cleaned the leg wound and gave it some painkiller.