1000 words about elephants
I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll begin with 1000 words on elephants.
Should be simple enough. I know a thing or two about elephants. At least 1000 words’ worth.
Let’s start.
There are two kinds of elephants: Asian and African. Kinds? I suppose. Were they the same group that was split geographically at some time? Was the African elephant introduced to Asia in overland trade? Seems like elephants were paraded around the Silk Road.
Wow, I really don’t know much about elephants. But we need 1000 words, so we move on.
Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants. It is possible that their ears are smaller proportionally as well, or I could be misremembering that. Asian elephants are the type at my local zoo.
As an elephant-related aside: Someone sent out a really weird mailer this election cycle with the question, “Who killed Packy?” The fact that the first elephant born in captivity in however many years died of disease in old age was supposed to make us mad about a transportation funding measure? And yet, there’s Baby Lily, who died a couple of years ago at our zoo, and my heart aches for her a little bit each time I walk past the Elephant Lands. What about Baby Lily? She was just little.
Anyway, that’s elephants. They’re herbivores.
The best elephant fact I have is actually a manatee fact. Did you know that manatees are distantly related to elephants? That’s why manatees have remnants of “fingernails” on their flippers. Look at a picture of a manatee right now, it’ll blow your mind. What do they need fingernails for? Nothing.
I’m going to say that’s about 350 words. 282!? Don’t quote me on that, I’m sure I’ll edit that bit later.
Elephants form strong group bonds, and the females help raise all the babies in the group. Isn’t that nice for them? I can’t complain too much I guess, since my kids are at the park with my husband right now, but wow, elephants, way to rub it in.
People kill African elephants for their tusks. Maybe Asian elephants, too? They don’t seem quite as tusky. I think I read that many Asian elephants barely grow tusks at all. Maybe they don’t fight as much? When I was a kid, poaching elephants for ivory seemed like pretty much the worst thing you could do. Selling used ivory was a little iffy. I wonder, now, what the ivory market looks like. Like quicksand, it’s just dropped on the list of Things We’re Worried About.
But that list, it’s a doozy.
What do elephants worry about? Probably a lot, if they really have such great memories. What a burden it would be, to never forget.
Elephants are grey, or kind of browny with pinkish splotches.
Elephants don’t drink with their trunks. They eat and drink with their mouths, of course, but they pick up the water and food with their trunks. Sometimes they blow it with these loud snorfing sounds. Mud baths! Dust baths! Water baths! Blowing that stuff all over the place! What is a dust bath for? To cool off? An elephant’s skin is wrinkly. Are they susceptible to sun damage? Certainly they can handle a little heat.
I’m only halfway through, but I know it can’t be THAT hard to write 1000 words about elephants. No, not that very hard at all. (That’s what we call padding.)
Elephants have a lot of padding. Or do they? Is that all muscle? How much fat does an elephant have? You’d think a lot, since they need to eat a lot of vegetation and it seems like it might be hard to get it reliably year-round? I don’t know! I do know that manatees have hardly any body fat, so they’re very susceptible to cold. I could probably write 1000 words on manatees much more easily.
Let’s talk Dumbo for a minute. They put out a remake that seems much more chill than the first version. When I was a kid, I didn’t watch a ton of Disney movies (maybe because I was the youngest of three and my brothers weren’t as interested) (that’s padding, again), but we did watch part of Dumbo in my elementary school gym one day, I think because it was parent-teacher conferences. I watched some, and it made me uncomfortable. Is it a good idea to make kid movies about the pain of being separated from a parent? I don’t know.
I used to have a fantasy about having my own pink miniature elephant. Maybe the idea came to me in a dream, but it seemed very real. I had a real imagination, when I was a kid, I didn’t have an imaginary friend exactly, but lots of stories. There was another movie I watched at a friend’s house, where they dye a dog pink, and that made me uncomfortable, too. That movie was etched into my mind for a long time.
Do you remember?
Why did I dream of tiny pink elephants?
They say that in order to train elephants, they used to tie the babies with chains. Eventually, they learn that being tied down means they can’t escape, so eventually you can just tie up an adult elephant with a small rope that they could easily break if they wanted to.
People extrapolate this into all kinds of meanings about giving up, I think.
I don’t know. Most people probably picture themselves as the elephant in this scenario. That their problems are just mental, that given the right resources, they could break themselves out of any metaphorical bounds and be a better, richer, more beautiful person.
But maybe we’re not the elephants in this scenario. Maybe we’re the humans. We like to think of some types of cruelty as something that happened in the past thanks to less civilized people. If only that were true.
I did it. By the time I finish writing this line, it should be pretty close to 1000 words.
(That’s padding.) (The end.)
