What is it like to be an elephant calf?
Yesterday, by way of refreshment from enumerating the falsehoods in Sholto Byrnes’s review of our book, Jeremy and I chatted a little about elephants. He’d sent me a picture of the Toronto elephants playing water games, so I made him envious by saying I used to join the Seattle elephants in their pool to scrub their backs and generally play with them. This led to a discussion of how one gets used to being around such large animals, and Jeremy asked if they knew not to tread on people by accident. I said they do, and told a little story to illustrate, and he thought I should share it, so I will. Consider it refreshment from whatever you need refreshment from.
One of those summer pool-play days, I was standing a short distance away from the pool and the youngest calf, Sri, who was about three at the time, was standing at the edge of it. She was about my height then, but so is an SUV – she was about my height and weighed several times as much. The older calf, Chai, was in the pool and she suddenly gave Sri a playful bump from behind that sent her rocketing straight toward me, too fast for me to jump out of the way. Sri slammed on the brakes in order not to crash into me. It’s not easy to do that! She had to dig in her feet and brace her legs and just jar herself to a stop – and she did. I was very impressed by that (not to mention very relieved). She was just a kid, but she not only knew not to crash into me, she knew it mattered enough to make a big effort.
The Toronto ‘phants on Saturday:
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| From Safari 2009-06-27 |
Cute story, and a nice bit of refreshment. I wanna play with elephants now.
BTW, OB – the subheaders you write for the news articles are funny as hell; I don’t know if you know how funny. “Therefore they’re Paul’s” made me spit out a Cheez-it. Consistently good fun.
Playing with elephants is way fun.
Oh, I know how funny, Josh. Mind you – I had a look and realized that the vast majority of them aren’t funny at all these days. More atrocity than foolery. I need more ‘balance.’
A fantastic programme about elephant anatomy on C4 last night featuring B+W favourite Richard Dawkins. The programme was structured around the dissection of an elephant carcass before a live audience and really brought home how extraordinary these creatures are. Did you know they walk on tiptoe? Me neither. They also seem to ritualise death in some ways, which raises the question of ‘animal culture’ another peg or two.
I admit it. I am completely envious that you got to play with elephants and I didn’t. But I have never forgotten my play date with the orangutans, so must be grateful for what I’ve got.
I knew they walk on tiptoe. (I daresay the ‘you’ was general.) Their feet are flat as pancakes but under the thick pad they are walking on the tips of the bones. Their walk is surprisingly delicate despite the flatness of the feet.
Playing with juvenile orangutans was also fun! I have some nice pics from those days – me with little orangs on my lap. Aww.
Certainly you were a good influence on the other primates. They haven’t invented any silly imaginary friends in the sky who set the rules. If they had, they’d have learned English (French, Dutch, etc) so they could try to convert all primates.
Yes, I did my best. Whenever one of them would point at the sky and look awed, I would shake my head violently and say ‘No, no, bad, dirty, nothing there!’
Well, I’m jealous. My best zoo story is the time I got to hold and feed an anteater. And the ten month old lab puppy I met at the dog park yesterday had much less self awareness than your elephant friend did, OB.
Granted, the pup was nowhere near my height. In fact, his head was precisely the height of my groin.
Hahahahahahahaha
Still – lab puppies are so cyoooooooot.
I have a lot of good zoo stories. The time the wolves got out. The time the bear got out. The time the elephants got out. The other time the elephants got out. The time the alpha male gorilla got out. The time the macaques got out. The time the red panda got out.
Critters getting out seem to feature largely!
There was the time we released the rehabilitated (from an injury) bald eagle on an island in the San Juans in January though. Now that was something.
The time you had a paranormal experience which you’ve been rationalising to this day! :-)
Rationalizing! What do you mean?! I never! I had no clue what it was until I read well afterwards that being woken up can trigger auditory hallucinations. Anyway it wasn’t paranormal, it was just silly. It wasn’t god, it was a human talking on the PA system at 3 in the morning. That’s not a paranormal experience! It wouldn’t happen, but it’s hardly supernatural. That’s why I didn’t realize it was a hallucination at the time.
Honestly. mutter mutter
Yeah right. Keep telling yourself it was a hallucination. :-)
Actually, in all seriousness, I’m not sure what you’re describing sounds like your typical hypnopompic hallucination.
It didn’t occur on waking, did it? Hadn’t you gone outside or something?
Wow! I looked at all the other animal photo’s in the Safari Park and they are absolutely a sight to behold. I saw that there was another weeny ‘phant in the B&W photo – when I looked at the enlarged one. Poor little sod is all squashed beneath his superiors. Maybe he/she is happy being so closely knitted between them!
I read that ‘phants can weigh as much a bus.
OB is surely the one to tell us all about animals as she has first hand experience of them indeed!
Yeah, I had gone outside. I heard it while I was outside waiting for the zoo’s night keeper to come get me. Certainly some time had passed since his phone call woke me.
It is odd…but what I heard would have been very odd too – but not at all supernatural.
By now of course I’ve contaminated the memory repeatedly by interrogating it. I think another oddity is that I heard the announcement more clearly than I could actually hear announcements from where I lived – but I’m not sure about that now.
Maybe I had a supernaturally bizarre hypnopompic auditory hallucination. Yeah that’s it.
Afterthought. There’s something truly funny about having had a ‘paranormal’ experience that’s so determinedly mundane that even if I decided it wasn’t a hallucination after all I would still be left with an odd but of the earth earthy incident. ‘I guess it wasn’t a hallucination. So…one night about 25 years ago some teenagers broke into the administration building at the zoo and played with the PA system. Oooooh, spoooooky.’
Hahahaha. I have no imagination when I hallucinate.