Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Finale
January 28th
Pictures are back! I’m putting them up right now; I'll try to post as many as possible tonight, but they take a while and internet is slow here. Unfortunately, only one of three rolls came out. For some reason my camera decided it doesn’t like Fujifilm. Not too happy about that, but at least I’ve got these. Enjoy!
We’re on our last week here, the last leg of the journey. It’s been an experience, that’s for sure, and more and more I realize how blessed I am—to be here, to have friends like Gail, to have a family that so unquestionably supports me, and to simply be. Be here, be alive, be loved. It’s all such a blessing. I know I haven’t been writing much lately, but that’s simply because I’ve just been enjoying myself too much. You’d think a seven-hour manual labor work day would get old, and sure I want to go home and see family and friends, but man, it’s going to be hard to leave here. Which brings me to my fifth reason I got into all of this. It’s pure love, being here. There’s no real way of explaining it; for some people you get that feeling of all being well in the world from a job, from children, a spouse. Right now in my life, I feel like I get that from doing this, being around the animals I love with people I love. There’s nothing that beats a job like that. It’s funny, being here and realizing how little so many things mean in comparison to how much the little things mean. I’ve been eating the same lunch every single day, wearing the same clothes, have a constant and healthy supply of hay in my boots at any given time, and there’s generally not a steady supply of toilet paper here. Lucy barks non-stop until the wee hours of the morning, the guinea hens make sounds in the night that sound like rusty door hinges creaking in the wind, and yet…everything is right. I’ve grown to love this community, the people, the elephants, the land, the flaws. These people are here because they want to be, not because they have to be. That’s the difference. I’m surrounded by people who care about the same things as I do, and to a degree I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s refreshing to be around such genuine human beings. It’s good to know they’re still out there, you know? Even if it is in the bowels of this off-the-grid, population 549 Arkansas village. They’re here; they exist. It’s been a wonderful five weeks, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I may be coming home, but I’ll be going back. There’s no question there.
Pictures are back! I’m putting them up right now; I'll try to post as many as possible tonight, but they take a while and internet is slow here. Unfortunately, only one of three rolls came out. For some reason my camera decided it doesn’t like Fujifilm. Not too happy about that, but at least I’ve got these. Enjoy!
We’re on our last week here, the last leg of the journey. It’s been an experience, that’s for sure, and more and more I realize how blessed I am—to be here, to have friends like Gail, to have a family that so unquestionably supports me, and to simply be. Be here, be alive, be loved. It’s all such a blessing. I know I haven’t been writing much lately, but that’s simply because I’ve just been enjoying myself too much. You’d think a seven-hour manual labor work day would get old, and sure I want to go home and see family and friends, but man, it’s going to be hard to leave here. Which brings me to my fifth reason I got into all of this. It’s pure love, being here. There’s no real way of explaining it; for some people you get that feeling of all being well in the world from a job, from children, a spouse. Right now in my life, I feel like I get that from doing this, being around the animals I love with people I love. There’s nothing that beats a job like that. It’s funny, being here and realizing how little so many things mean in comparison to how much the little things mean. I’ve been eating the same lunch every single day, wearing the same clothes, have a constant and healthy supply of hay in my boots at any given time, and there’s generally not a steady supply of toilet paper here. Lucy barks non-stop until the wee hours of the morning, the guinea hens make sounds in the night that sound like rusty door hinges creaking in the wind, and yet…everything is right. I’ve grown to love this community, the people, the elephants, the land, the flaws. These people are here because they want to be, not because they have to be. That’s the difference. I’m surrounded by people who care about the same things as I do, and to a degree I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s refreshing to be around such genuine human beings. It’s good to know they’re still out there, you know? Even if it is in the bowels of this off-the-grid, population 549 Arkansas village. They’re here; they exist. It’s been a wonderful five weeks, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I may be coming home, but I’ll be going back. There’s no question there.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Back to the Beginning
January 23rd
Bad news—the photos aren’t in yet. They’ll hopefully be up by Monday, and if not then, then Tuesday. For now, I’ll take the time to tell a story I’ve neglected thus far to share: The Beginning. In all stories there is always a beginning, always a middle, and always an end. Right now I’m in the middle, and it’s hard to say where the end will lie. The beginning started a year ago, in a little classroom on Interlochen Arts Academy’s campus in the dead of a Michigan winter. For those of you who don’t know, I attended the Academy as a creative writing major for four years, studying fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and literary publications. Fall semester of my senior year I was enrolled in a poetry workshop. This was the semester, the class, and the experience that would define the current obsessive fascination I hold with elephants. As a class of nine, we had each other to exploit as creative resources on a daily basis, and would bring in work daily to be read, critiqued, and later polished. Although we always had somewhat specific assignments, I always felt that, as much as it urged us to practice self-discipline in the art of writing, it was lacking in the aspect of drawing entirely from the self and not from another’s creative juices. And so, I was entirely pleased when a new assignment was born: The Important Excitement. We were given complete creative freedom with one condition—find something that excites you, gets you thinking, grabs ahold of you and won’t let go, and write the hell out of it. While some people chose to write about something they were already excited about, I chose to look for something new. It was in this way that I discovered the dark past of circus elephants. There were five defining moments of discovery that clawed into me and set something uncontrollably loose.
The first was elephant graveyards. While elephants don’t bury their dead, they do something equivocally emotive. When a herd comes across the bones of another elephant, they will stop their trek and mourn. The same is true for the sick. Elephants never leave one of their own behind, even if it means their own death. While I can’t prove this to be true, I would say that I believe it under the same circumstances as humans would act: you may not risk your life for your whole herd, but there is that small group of people that you would die for. The same seems to go for elephants. But maybe there’s some amount of ignorance there, believing everything I read simply for the sake of pure, childlike fascination with this beast. That may be just it—a fascination with possibility, not necessarily fact. The second discovery was of the circus. These discoveries were fact, are fact, and will be fact throughout history. In the 1920’s, the circus was a common form of entertainment, having all sorts of attractions from the Strongman to trapeze artists to the elephants. I believe, because of the abuse of the occupation in the past, that trainers have earned a scathed name for themselves. Scott, the owner here, considers himself an oldschool trainer. That equates to a certain amount of brutality. The problem is, many people tend to use words such as cruelty and abuse synonymously with the word brutality. I did before I got here. The difference, I believe, is in where the line is crossed. While brutality is a necessity to training such large, wild animals, cruelty is not. The line is crossed at cruelty, and the line where brutality becomes cruelty is precariously thin. There is, it seems, an art to finding the balance necessary to command control over an elephant without crossing over to becoming the beast yourself. Scott, I believe, is a man that knows the line well and has walked it all of his life. Many trainers in the past mistook brutality to mean something physical. While it may be in some cases, it is not, and cannot be, in the case of training elephants. Brutality in this case is purely verbal and emotional. You must command control over the animal by asserting a certain amount of verbal and emotional brutality. To them, you must become the alpha if you want to gain any of their respect. This misconception of a single principle caused many deaths in circuses due to mistreatment of elephants. Many trainers were killed, and many elephants went with them for their actions. Such was the case with Murderous Mary, an elephant that turned on her trainer and, as a result, was hung by a crane for a crowd in Kingston, Tennessee in 1916. The first time they hung her the chain snapped and she broke her hip. The second time was a success, but if you can imagine how long it took—in the end, it was her weight that pulled her to her death, slowly. I can’t say for sure whether or not her trainer used excessive force, but what I can say is that PETA wasn’t around back then to go batshit on an over-zealous trainer. Animal abuse was more accepted then. Which leads me to my third and forth discoveries: Edison’s Elephant and The Elephant Ballet. For those who weren’t aware, Thomas Edison was an extremely cruel person. He treated his workers like dirt and thought nothing of it. At the time of the invention of electricity, Edison faced a competitor, Tesla. While Edison had invented a type of continuous-current electricity, Tesla had invented alternating current electricity, the kind we use to this day. Edison felt the need to exploit the dangers of Tesla’s form of electricity, and so went cross-country electrocuting stray cats and dogs to prove his point. And that’s when another elephant turned on another trainer, and when Edison got his hands on the ultimate spectacle: electrocuting an elephant. The horrific event was filmed, and was the first motion picture to circulate around the nation for all to see. Now, I saw the film for myself, thinking it necessary for research’s sake. While it may have been necessary, it was the most pain I’ve ever felt for any non-human suffering I have ever witnessed. While I’ve been here, I’ve learned a handful of things, one of them being a certain fear all elephants have: electricity. Elephants are terrified of it, even amounts that humans can barely detect with their bare skin. Now imagine having a current circulating throughout your body, burning you inside out until you fall over dead. I knew there was something greater than death happening in that video when I first saw it, but when I thought back again, I realized what had been locked in that elephant’s eyes: utter terror. It was the worst death a man could give such a beast, and Edison had enthusiastically complied.
That’s it for now. I’ll write more later about Tchaikovsky’s ballet and the fifth reason for this insane obsession.
Bad news—the photos aren’t in yet. They’ll hopefully be up by Monday, and if not then, then Tuesday. For now, I’ll take the time to tell a story I’ve neglected thus far to share: The Beginning. In all stories there is always a beginning, always a middle, and always an end. Right now I’m in the middle, and it’s hard to say where the end will lie. The beginning started a year ago, in a little classroom on Interlochen Arts Academy’s campus in the dead of a Michigan winter. For those of you who don’t know, I attended the Academy as a creative writing major for four years, studying fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and literary publications. Fall semester of my senior year I was enrolled in a poetry workshop. This was the semester, the class, and the experience that would define the current obsessive fascination I hold with elephants. As a class of nine, we had each other to exploit as creative resources on a daily basis, and would bring in work daily to be read, critiqued, and later polished. Although we always had somewhat specific assignments, I always felt that, as much as it urged us to practice self-discipline in the art of writing, it was lacking in the aspect of drawing entirely from the self and not from another’s creative juices. And so, I was entirely pleased when a new assignment was born: The Important Excitement. We were given complete creative freedom with one condition—find something that excites you, gets you thinking, grabs ahold of you and won’t let go, and write the hell out of it. While some people chose to write about something they were already excited about, I chose to look for something new. It was in this way that I discovered the dark past of circus elephants. There were five defining moments of discovery that clawed into me and set something uncontrollably loose.
The first was elephant graveyards. While elephants don’t bury their dead, they do something equivocally emotive. When a herd comes across the bones of another elephant, they will stop their trek and mourn. The same is true for the sick. Elephants never leave one of their own behind, even if it means their own death. While I can’t prove this to be true, I would say that I believe it under the same circumstances as humans would act: you may not risk your life for your whole herd, but there is that small group of people that you would die for. The same seems to go for elephants. But maybe there’s some amount of ignorance there, believing everything I read simply for the sake of pure, childlike fascination with this beast. That may be just it—a fascination with possibility, not necessarily fact. The second discovery was of the circus. These discoveries were fact, are fact, and will be fact throughout history. In the 1920’s, the circus was a common form of entertainment, having all sorts of attractions from the Strongman to trapeze artists to the elephants. I believe, because of the abuse of the occupation in the past, that trainers have earned a scathed name for themselves. Scott, the owner here, considers himself an oldschool trainer. That equates to a certain amount of brutality. The problem is, many people tend to use words such as cruelty and abuse synonymously with the word brutality. I did before I got here. The difference, I believe, is in where the line is crossed. While brutality is a necessity to training such large, wild animals, cruelty is not. The line is crossed at cruelty, and the line where brutality becomes cruelty is precariously thin. There is, it seems, an art to finding the balance necessary to command control over an elephant without crossing over to becoming the beast yourself. Scott, I believe, is a man that knows the line well and has walked it all of his life. Many trainers in the past mistook brutality to mean something physical. While it may be in some cases, it is not, and cannot be, in the case of training elephants. Brutality in this case is purely verbal and emotional. You must command control over the animal by asserting a certain amount of verbal and emotional brutality. To them, you must become the alpha if you want to gain any of their respect. This misconception of a single principle caused many deaths in circuses due to mistreatment of elephants. Many trainers were killed, and many elephants went with them for their actions. Such was the case with Murderous Mary, an elephant that turned on her trainer and, as a result, was hung by a crane for a crowd in Kingston, Tennessee in 1916. The first time they hung her the chain snapped and she broke her hip. The second time was a success, but if you can imagine how long it took—in the end, it was her weight that pulled her to her death, slowly. I can’t say for sure whether or not her trainer used excessive force, but what I can say is that PETA wasn’t around back then to go batshit on an over-zealous trainer. Animal abuse was more accepted then. Which leads me to my third and forth discoveries: Edison’s Elephant and The Elephant Ballet. For those who weren’t aware, Thomas Edison was an extremely cruel person. He treated his workers like dirt and thought nothing of it. At the time of the invention of electricity, Edison faced a competitor, Tesla. While Edison had invented a type of continuous-current electricity, Tesla had invented alternating current electricity, the kind we use to this day. Edison felt the need to exploit the dangers of Tesla’s form of electricity, and so went cross-country electrocuting stray cats and dogs to prove his point. And that’s when another elephant turned on another trainer, and when Edison got his hands on the ultimate spectacle: electrocuting an elephant. The horrific event was filmed, and was the first motion picture to circulate around the nation for all to see. Now, I saw the film for myself, thinking it necessary for research’s sake. While it may have been necessary, it was the most pain I’ve ever felt for any non-human suffering I have ever witnessed. While I’ve been here, I’ve learned a handful of things, one of them being a certain fear all elephants have: electricity. Elephants are terrified of it, even amounts that humans can barely detect with their bare skin. Now imagine having a current circulating throughout your body, burning you inside out until you fall over dead. I knew there was something greater than death happening in that video when I first saw it, but when I thought back again, I realized what had been locked in that elephant’s eyes: utter terror. It was the worst death a man could give such a beast, and Edison had enthusiastically complied.
That’s it for now. I’ll write more later about Tchaikovsky’s ballet and the fifth reason for this insane obsession.
Pictures Tonight!
Hello everyone!
I went to Wal-Mart a week ago to get my pictures developed and hopefully they'll be done when I go out for groceries today. I made sure to get a CD so I can just post them here for everyone to see. Check back!
Amelia
I went to Wal-Mart a week ago to get my pictures developed and hopefully they'll be done when I go out for groceries today. I made sure to get a CD so I can just post them here for everyone to see. Check back!
Amelia
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Goodbyes, Elephant Attacks, and Births
January 14th
Today was a good day. Aside from working way later than usual, the events that unraveled throughout the morning, afternoon and evening were…satisfying. In the morning we rushed off to the normal routine of preparing diets (the term for meals), shoveling and sweeping hay and poo, hosing, and driving around various trucks that, by my standard, are far past their due dates for the dump. And yet…they all somehow still run. Like everyone on this farm, they’ve got just enough left at the end of the day to get the job done and to do the job right.
Tomorrow is Zoe and Pete’s last day here. They’ve finished the one-month internship that Gail and I still have two weeks left of. It’ll be sad to see them go, but it’ll mean that the days may end up more structured than they have been lately, which will be quite nice. With so many people (seven) there’s not always something for everyone to do, so more often than not there’s a loner off in the distance sweeping up the same stray poolets (as Stacey, a new intern, calls small pieces of poop) over and over. Rather than getting things done more quickly, tasks tend to get performed just as well in a less efficient manner. So good riddance to you both, but I shall miss your jolly company.
After lunch we went down to the Asian barn where Booper, a retired circus elephant, was marched out of her yard to give Zoe and Pete their graduation rides. Poor Booper has had foot problems lately, and recently it’s spread to her whole front right leg. She’s been favoring her left side, and flinches and barks whenever Scott tells her to lift. (Lift is the generic command a trainer uses to get an elephant to lift a leg, usually to either keep them steady while doing something or to put on or take off a leg chain) So, Zoe and Pete got their ride, and afterward Booper was rewarded with the solution to her foot problems. Because of the swelling and the heat Scott could feel in her upper leg, he decided the leg needed to be drained, In order to do so, the infection essentially needs to either be opened up or cut out. In the last case where Booper’s same foot got infected, they cut out the infection, something I think was avoided today by simply opening the skin where her nail meets her foot (essentially the cuticle, if it were a hand). It was hard to watch, because you could see her trying not to move, but she’d flinch and close her eyes tighter every time he yanked another piece off to reveal more of the infected flesh. Hopefully it’ll have drained some by tomorrow.
In the evening we all went about doing our own things as we usually do, ate dinner, and drove off to the Baskin Robbins to get Scott a pint of his favorite ice cream as a sort of bribe to show us his various elephant tapes he kept stored in his house. Gail and I baked him cookies, another demand he made in return for the movies. They were all different movies about elephant attacks, and after each one he’d ask us what went wrong. In one it was simply an issue of doing too much, where the trainer kept repeating the same command whether or not the elephant was complying or not, and wasn’t enforcing the command when it wasn’t. Another was a simple case of stupidity in allowing a 14-year old to be a licensed trainer, and another yet was a trainer’s failure to acknowledge the danger of introducing a stranger to a downright mean elephant. The results? A man pushed and kicked across a yard, a man thrown against a wall through the brute force of an elephant barreling through a gate, and a boy trampled by an agitated elephant. It’s true, these animals are highly intelligent, and they are vindictive, but they can also be downright mean, and often without legitimate reason. When an elephant decides it wants to kill you, for whatever reason, you don’t have much of a chance. You can continue to work with that elephant until it finds the perfect moment, or you can accept that you will forever be in danger with that animal and discontinue working with it. Whatever your choice, staying with the animal is a certain death wish. They will not forget the decision they made, nor will they go back on it.
The last video wasn’t one about death, but about birth. Scott had told us many times about how many captive females will reject, even kill their babies, when they birth a calf. Eight out of ten pregnant captive elephants will try to kill their baby. Many will accept the calf after the mother has realized what it is, and I never really understood why that motherly instinct didn’t just simply kick in until Scott explained it.
“Imagine being a woman, outcast from all of society. You never see any other humans, never hear about babies, never hold a doll in your entire life. Somehow you become pregnant, and 9 months later you’re in the worst pain you’ve ever felt. Suddenly something’s coming out of you, and all you know is that it’s hurting you. What are you going to do? You either run from it or you hurt it back,” he said. Of course as humans we understand not to hurt our babies because we go into the situation understanding what will come out of it. On the other end of the spectrum, a wild animal that needs a matriarchal society to understand birth is without that novelty and thus rejects what’s hurting it. In the wild some females still kill their babies, but the matriarchs are there to act as a sort of guide through the birthing, and to guard the baby once it’s born. With the matriarch protecting the thing the mother recognizes as the source of pain, the mother begins to understand she shouldn’t hurt it back. In captivity, humans must intervene seconds after birth to pull the baby out of the mother’s reach so as to avoid bodily harm to the calf, as we saw in one of the videos where a trainer failed to tie up the cow in labor. It sounds bad to tie up an elephant that’s giving birth, but it forces them into the best birthing position and keeps them from accidentally or purposely stomping the baby once it’s out. I suppose that if you think about it, maternal instinct in humans is actually a taught thing; we learn it first from our mothers, then teach it to our daughters, and so on. It really is something, being here and learning all about their behaviors. It's not everything you'd expect, but it sure makes you open your eyes to the realities of what it means to care for wild animals in such a way that you both protect them and maintain the utmost respect for the wildness.
Today was a good day. Aside from working way later than usual, the events that unraveled throughout the morning, afternoon and evening were…satisfying. In the morning we rushed off to the normal routine of preparing diets (the term for meals), shoveling and sweeping hay and poo, hosing, and driving around various trucks that, by my standard, are far past their due dates for the dump. And yet…they all somehow still run. Like everyone on this farm, they’ve got just enough left at the end of the day to get the job done and to do the job right.
Tomorrow is Zoe and Pete’s last day here. They’ve finished the one-month internship that Gail and I still have two weeks left of. It’ll be sad to see them go, but it’ll mean that the days may end up more structured than they have been lately, which will be quite nice. With so many people (seven) there’s not always something for everyone to do, so more often than not there’s a loner off in the distance sweeping up the same stray poolets (as Stacey, a new intern, calls small pieces of poop) over and over. Rather than getting things done more quickly, tasks tend to get performed just as well in a less efficient manner. So good riddance to you both, but I shall miss your jolly company.
After lunch we went down to the Asian barn where Booper, a retired circus elephant, was marched out of her yard to give Zoe and Pete their graduation rides. Poor Booper has had foot problems lately, and recently it’s spread to her whole front right leg. She’s been favoring her left side, and flinches and barks whenever Scott tells her to lift. (Lift is the generic command a trainer uses to get an elephant to lift a leg, usually to either keep them steady while doing something or to put on or take off a leg chain) So, Zoe and Pete got their ride, and afterward Booper was rewarded with the solution to her foot problems. Because of the swelling and the heat Scott could feel in her upper leg, he decided the leg needed to be drained, In order to do so, the infection essentially needs to either be opened up or cut out. In the last case where Booper’s same foot got infected, they cut out the infection, something I think was avoided today by simply opening the skin where her nail meets her foot (essentially the cuticle, if it were a hand). It was hard to watch, because you could see her trying not to move, but she’d flinch and close her eyes tighter every time he yanked another piece off to reveal more of the infected flesh. Hopefully it’ll have drained some by tomorrow.
In the evening we all went about doing our own things as we usually do, ate dinner, and drove off to the Baskin Robbins to get Scott a pint of his favorite ice cream as a sort of bribe to show us his various elephant tapes he kept stored in his house. Gail and I baked him cookies, another demand he made in return for the movies. They were all different movies about elephant attacks, and after each one he’d ask us what went wrong. In one it was simply an issue of doing too much, where the trainer kept repeating the same command whether or not the elephant was complying or not, and wasn’t enforcing the command when it wasn’t. Another was a simple case of stupidity in allowing a 14-year old to be a licensed trainer, and another yet was a trainer’s failure to acknowledge the danger of introducing a stranger to a downright mean elephant. The results? A man pushed and kicked across a yard, a man thrown against a wall through the brute force of an elephant barreling through a gate, and a boy trampled by an agitated elephant. It’s true, these animals are highly intelligent, and they are vindictive, but they can also be downright mean, and often without legitimate reason. When an elephant decides it wants to kill you, for whatever reason, you don’t have much of a chance. You can continue to work with that elephant until it finds the perfect moment, or you can accept that you will forever be in danger with that animal and discontinue working with it. Whatever your choice, staying with the animal is a certain death wish. They will not forget the decision they made, nor will they go back on it.
The last video wasn’t one about death, but about birth. Scott had told us many times about how many captive females will reject, even kill their babies, when they birth a calf. Eight out of ten pregnant captive elephants will try to kill their baby. Many will accept the calf after the mother has realized what it is, and I never really understood why that motherly instinct didn’t just simply kick in until Scott explained it.
“Imagine being a woman, outcast from all of society. You never see any other humans, never hear about babies, never hold a doll in your entire life. Somehow you become pregnant, and 9 months later you’re in the worst pain you’ve ever felt. Suddenly something’s coming out of you, and all you know is that it’s hurting you. What are you going to do? You either run from it or you hurt it back,” he said. Of course as humans we understand not to hurt our babies because we go into the situation understanding what will come out of it. On the other end of the spectrum, a wild animal that needs a matriarchal society to understand birth is without that novelty and thus rejects what’s hurting it. In the wild some females still kill their babies, but the matriarchs are there to act as a sort of guide through the birthing, and to guard the baby once it’s born. With the matriarch protecting the thing the mother recognizes as the source of pain, the mother begins to understand she shouldn’t hurt it back. In captivity, humans must intervene seconds after birth to pull the baby out of the mother’s reach so as to avoid bodily harm to the calf, as we saw in one of the videos where a trainer failed to tie up the cow in labor. It sounds bad to tie up an elephant that’s giving birth, but it forces them into the best birthing position and keeps them from accidentally or purposely stomping the baby once it’s out. I suppose that if you think about it, maternal instinct in humans is actually a taught thing; we learn it first from our mothers, then teach it to our daughters, and so on. It really is something, being here and learning all about their behaviors. It's not everything you'd expect, but it sure makes you open your eyes to the realities of what it means to care for wild animals in such a way that you both protect them and maintain the utmost respect for the wildness.
The Truths of Training
January 13th
I haven’t written the past few days because, well, there hasn’t been much to write about. The weather’s been letting up a bit here, and the elephants are able to go out into their yards, but things have become a bit static. Days are blurring together, and it’s all I can do to remember the date without a calendar. I guess that means I’m doing something right, yeah? We’ve been doing a lot of what’s been dubbed “bitch work,” which is exactly what it sounds like. The work has nothing to do with the elephants, it’s simply cleaning up garbage that’s piled up over the last 20 years here. Scott tends to keep everything, and when I say everything I mean everything. He takes a lot of it to the auction to get what few pennies he can, but for the most part everything tends to up in one place: the dump. We, the interns and workers, have lately been the guinea pigs in charge of filling the dump. That means sorting, hosing, scrubbing, and everything else of the sort. Today I was told, “Take that there bucket to the dump and that there bucket top full o’ poison to the dump and be damn sure not to breathe near it, get near it, inhale near it. Nothin’.” Well…mission accomplished? I must’ve looked quite silly as I took a huge breath, picked up the poison and crept to the huge hole that was the dump with the bag held at arm’s length and nose pointed away. Once at the edge I hurled it as far as possible, turning quickly to sprint away as a huge cloud of white dust exploded into the air. I also had a close encounter with death today when I was riding on the back of the blue pick-up, holding on to the car and standing up, when Johnny floored it. I went flying back, Newton’s laws of motion doing their best to pull me off the bed. They say it takes a while to get your sailor’s feet. I say it takes a while to get your “Johnny’s driving the truck today” feet. Of course he got a kick out of it, because of course I let out an embarrassingly high-pitched series of yelps as I tried to regain balance. “You alright back there, Blondie?” he yelled. I was already sitting down, waiting until the end of the ride to tell him who’s what. He got a kick out of that too.
Apart from the various brushes with death, everything’s been pretty hunky-dory. No complaints here. You’d think an 8-hour manual labor workday would get old after a while, but it’s like a breath of fresh air right now after a whirlwind semester of cramming the corners of my brain with all realms of academia. No calcium channels opening due to a change in voltage that causes the troponin of the thick filaments of a sarcomere to unravel and…Shovel, lift, dump. No brain needed. Wonderful bliss. The biggest issue here is simply sleeping. Besides Gail’s adorable snoring, the guinea hens squawking in the cedar by our window, and Lucy barking until the wee hours of the morning, falling asleep is a breeze. I’ve taken to listening to Yo-Yo at night, but last night it wasn’t enough to tune out a lovely harmony of Gail’s congested nasal passageways and Lucy’s insistence on barking away ghosts. So it goes. I do have lunchtime though. For naps. That’s a lifesaver. Mom, I feel like I’m beginning to get some sort of idea about what it means to devour lunch at med school; here you’d do anything for a nap once you get off for lunch, but that means inhaling a sandwich like it’s your last meal. I’ve gotten quite good at it, really. I suppose I always was pretty good at inhaling food though…
The latest excitement here has been one I hadn’t expected to occur for some while. Now, it’s happened twice. Scott has opened his mouth to reveal the secret lives, horrors, and wonders of elephants for us through hour-long recollections of previous elephants, his relationships with various trainers, the mentality of a true animal caretaker, and what it takes to see past what you want to do and what’s right to do. It’s amazing what an hour can convince of if you’re in the presence of the right individual. For example, when I got here I was appalled (or sad, really) to see that the elephants were chained in their stalls. Sure, they could move, but only a very limited amount. In the first week I also saw two trainers scream at one elephant, one getting almost too physical with it for my weak heart. But then, Scott talked to us about the why’s and what’s of what it is to be a trainer. “These days, ‘trainer’ is like a bad word,” he said. “The truth is, you’ve got to love these creatures more than anything else. This lifestyle is like being a drug addict, or an alcoholic. These animals are your life, everything you do revolves around them, yet your life means nothing to them.” It was true. “But you also have to understand that, like with any animal, human or non-human, there’s got to be some discipline. You don’t send your kid to school and tell the teacher to let them do whatever. They’d end up out at recess all the time, beating the shit out of other kids. You’ve got to teach them that sitting in a desk is necessary. That’s what that crazy lady at Tennessee doesn’t understand. These animals aren’t here to love you. They’re here because of you, but they are not here for you.” He's all they've got, and ain't it something how hard he's got them.
I haven’t written the past few days because, well, there hasn’t been much to write about. The weather’s been letting up a bit here, and the elephants are able to go out into their yards, but things have become a bit static. Days are blurring together, and it’s all I can do to remember the date without a calendar. I guess that means I’m doing something right, yeah? We’ve been doing a lot of what’s been dubbed “bitch work,” which is exactly what it sounds like. The work has nothing to do with the elephants, it’s simply cleaning up garbage that’s piled up over the last 20 years here. Scott tends to keep everything, and when I say everything I mean everything. He takes a lot of it to the auction to get what few pennies he can, but for the most part everything tends to up in one place: the dump. We, the interns and workers, have lately been the guinea pigs in charge of filling the dump. That means sorting, hosing, scrubbing, and everything else of the sort. Today I was told, “Take that there bucket to the dump and that there bucket top full o’ poison to the dump and be damn sure not to breathe near it, get near it, inhale near it. Nothin’.” Well…mission accomplished? I must’ve looked quite silly as I took a huge breath, picked up the poison and crept to the huge hole that was the dump with the bag held at arm’s length and nose pointed away. Once at the edge I hurled it as far as possible, turning quickly to sprint away as a huge cloud of white dust exploded into the air. I also had a close encounter with death today when I was riding on the back of the blue pick-up, holding on to the car and standing up, when Johnny floored it. I went flying back, Newton’s laws of motion doing their best to pull me off the bed. They say it takes a while to get your sailor’s feet. I say it takes a while to get your “Johnny’s driving the truck today” feet. Of course he got a kick out of it, because of course I let out an embarrassingly high-pitched series of yelps as I tried to regain balance. “You alright back there, Blondie?” he yelled. I was already sitting down, waiting until the end of the ride to tell him who’s what. He got a kick out of that too.
Apart from the various brushes with death, everything’s been pretty hunky-dory. No complaints here. You’d think an 8-hour manual labor workday would get old after a while, but it’s like a breath of fresh air right now after a whirlwind semester of cramming the corners of my brain with all realms of academia. No calcium channels opening due to a change in voltage that causes the troponin of the thick filaments of a sarcomere to unravel and…Shovel, lift, dump. No brain needed. Wonderful bliss. The biggest issue here is simply sleeping. Besides Gail’s adorable snoring, the guinea hens squawking in the cedar by our window, and Lucy barking until the wee hours of the morning, falling asleep is a breeze. I’ve taken to listening to Yo-Yo at night, but last night it wasn’t enough to tune out a lovely harmony of Gail’s congested nasal passageways and Lucy’s insistence on barking away ghosts. So it goes. I do have lunchtime though. For naps. That’s a lifesaver. Mom, I feel like I’m beginning to get some sort of idea about what it means to devour lunch at med school; here you’d do anything for a nap once you get off for lunch, but that means inhaling a sandwich like it’s your last meal. I’ve gotten quite good at it, really. I suppose I always was pretty good at inhaling food though…
The latest excitement here has been one I hadn’t expected to occur for some while. Now, it’s happened twice. Scott has opened his mouth to reveal the secret lives, horrors, and wonders of elephants for us through hour-long recollections of previous elephants, his relationships with various trainers, the mentality of a true animal caretaker, and what it takes to see past what you want to do and what’s right to do. It’s amazing what an hour can convince of if you’re in the presence of the right individual. For example, when I got here I was appalled (or sad, really) to see that the elephants were chained in their stalls. Sure, they could move, but only a very limited amount. In the first week I also saw two trainers scream at one elephant, one getting almost too physical with it for my weak heart. But then, Scott talked to us about the why’s and what’s of what it is to be a trainer. “These days, ‘trainer’ is like a bad word,” he said. “The truth is, you’ve got to love these creatures more than anything else. This lifestyle is like being a drug addict, or an alcoholic. These animals are your life, everything you do revolves around them, yet your life means nothing to them.” It was true. “But you also have to understand that, like with any animal, human or non-human, there’s got to be some discipline. You don’t send your kid to school and tell the teacher to let them do whatever. They’d end up out at recess all the time, beating the shit out of other kids. You’ve got to teach them that sitting in a desk is necessary. That’s what that crazy lady at Tennessee doesn’t understand. These animals aren’t here to love you. They’re here because of you, but they are not here for you.” He's all they've got, and ain't it something how hard he's got them.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Jesus Cat, Bets the Escape Artist and Wal-Mart Adventures
January 10th
It may be sad, but the highlight of our weeks comes down to one thing and one thing only: the trip to Wal-Mart that bring with it both a shopping adventure and the movie of the week. They have a RedBox there, which is basically like Netflix that you do yourself. You pick a movie, it spits it out, and you return it at your leisure, at $1 per day. Not bad, eh? So far we’ve watched Star Trek, 9, Inglorious Basterds (really good, by the way), Boondocks Saints, and House of 1,000 corpses. The last two they’ve got here, on VHS. A real, working VHS player. I haven’t seen one of those since my Disney years. So, we’re currently off to Wal-Mart for our weekly groceries and movie, a quick jaunt to Starbucks and a possible stop at IHOP for some delicious and strangely-timed breakfast food. It’s really a bit like being at school, considering the highlight of our weeks there consist of midnight dances and trips to Wal-Mart and Pizza Hut. It’s a bit of a comfort, really. My sister would be quite displeased with that statement.
Moving on to the animals. Today it was finally warm enough for the elephants, even Amy and Bets, to go outside. I try to go out on my day off to take pictures, as it’s difficult to do so in the middle of throwing hay or shoveling poo. I’m also off to get a digital camera today, so maybe I’ll be able to upload some pictures soon. Anyhow, today Bets was out with Amy, and I just happened to decide to take pictures just as Bets was beginning to display her infamous act of escapism. How an elephant of her size (1,700 pounds) Get’s through a gate with bars 2 feet up from one another was beyond me. Until today. She’s got a technique, the young’un, and a good one, at that. She lifts one leg over the bar and positions herself sideways in order to maneuver her hind leg over, and I would imagine she simply squeezes from there. I didn’t get to witness the whole act, as she quickly gave up when she realized that she wasn’t in her normal yard. They’d specifically switched her to the yard with more narrow bars simply due to the fact that she’d become such a successful escape artist. I see a bit of myself in her, really, always squirming and poking and inquiring at every possible chance. An undoubted annoyance to the trainers, but nonetheless the most adorable annoyance possible. Whether or not I fitted that last criterion is debatable.
So, Jesus Cat. You’re probably wondering, what is Jesus Cat? Jesus Cat is exactly what he sounds like. He walks on water. The other day I was in the blue truck, driving to the African barn when I noticed one of the orange cats floating on top of the pond. I kid you not, this cat looked like he had supernatural powers, at the lake had frozen just enough for him to walk on it without falling through but not to the point where it looked the slightest bit frozen. And thus, he is now dubbed Jesus Cat, walker of water and prowler of fish and mice. I also saw one of the other cats leap straight into the water, a dive really, to come back up with a flopping fish. Man, that cat must’ve been hungry. That water must’ve been frigid. He looked happy enough. Though when he got out and got over his prize, he seemed to understand the sudden predicament of being completely soaked in sub-zero temperatures. Oh well, keep your eye on the prize, no?
It may be sad, but the highlight of our weeks comes down to one thing and one thing only: the trip to Wal-Mart that bring with it both a shopping adventure and the movie of the week. They have a RedBox there, which is basically like Netflix that you do yourself. You pick a movie, it spits it out, and you return it at your leisure, at $1 per day. Not bad, eh? So far we’ve watched Star Trek, 9, Inglorious Basterds (really good, by the way), Boondocks Saints, and House of 1,000 corpses. The last two they’ve got here, on VHS. A real, working VHS player. I haven’t seen one of those since my Disney years. So, we’re currently off to Wal-Mart for our weekly groceries and movie, a quick jaunt to Starbucks and a possible stop at IHOP for some delicious and strangely-timed breakfast food. It’s really a bit like being at school, considering the highlight of our weeks there consist of midnight dances and trips to Wal-Mart and Pizza Hut. It’s a bit of a comfort, really. My sister would be quite displeased with that statement.
Moving on to the animals. Today it was finally warm enough for the elephants, even Amy and Bets, to go outside. I try to go out on my day off to take pictures, as it’s difficult to do so in the middle of throwing hay or shoveling poo. I’m also off to get a digital camera today, so maybe I’ll be able to upload some pictures soon. Anyhow, today Bets was out with Amy, and I just happened to decide to take pictures just as Bets was beginning to display her infamous act of escapism. How an elephant of her size (1,700 pounds) Get’s through a gate with bars 2 feet up from one another was beyond me. Until today. She’s got a technique, the young’un, and a good one, at that. She lifts one leg over the bar and positions herself sideways in order to maneuver her hind leg over, and I would imagine she simply squeezes from there. I didn’t get to witness the whole act, as she quickly gave up when she realized that she wasn’t in her normal yard. They’d specifically switched her to the yard with more narrow bars simply due to the fact that she’d become such a successful escape artist. I see a bit of myself in her, really, always squirming and poking and inquiring at every possible chance. An undoubted annoyance to the trainers, but nonetheless the most adorable annoyance possible. Whether or not I fitted that last criterion is debatable.
So, Jesus Cat. You’re probably wondering, what is Jesus Cat? Jesus Cat is exactly what he sounds like. He walks on water. The other day I was in the blue truck, driving to the African barn when I noticed one of the orange cats floating on top of the pond. I kid you not, this cat looked like he had supernatural powers, at the lake had frozen just enough for him to walk on it without falling through but not to the point where it looked the slightest bit frozen. And thus, he is now dubbed Jesus Cat, walker of water and prowler of fish and mice. I also saw one of the other cats leap straight into the water, a dive really, to come back up with a flopping fish. Man, that cat must’ve been hungry. That water must’ve been frigid. He looked happy enough. Though when he got out and got over his prize, he seemed to understand the sudden predicament of being completely soaked in sub-zero temperatures. Oh well, keep your eye on the prize, no?
A Poo-Flinging Extravaganza
January 9th
A while ago a fantastical rumor was proven true to me here. While I’d seen mice in cartoons scaring the living daylight out of elephants thousands of times their size, I never gave much thought to it being anything other than a massive (or tiny?) irony. The truth of it is as follows: mice carry a disease that thrives in fecal matter, the likes of which can easily find its way into an elephant’s food, should that mouse be gnawing on some tasty treat meant for the enormous beasts. How did I learn this? After a brief lecture on why we sweep the grain room twice. Not only do we sweep it twice, but we cover every open food bucket to ensure that our large friends here do not meet their demise at the hand of such an ironic fate. Apparently the amount of caution can never be too great—a few years back the Columbus Zoo lost all but one of their kangaroos to the same tragedy.
Today started like any other day, waking up early to a bowl of cereal and a cup of not-so-great coffee with a healthy amount of non-fat cream. Who thought of that paradox, anyhow? What was different today was not noticed until we reached the African barn. The walls. Dear Lord, the walls. Toby had apparently become bored with being stuck in his stall for days upon days due to the harsh weather, and had taken it upon himself to pepper—no, I’d say paint—the walls with his shit. Someone last night had had one hell of a time flinging shit every which way throughout the night. Thank god Max hadn’t followed suit. And of course, which wall had Toby thrown his shit? The one we cleaned yesterday—no big deal, buddy. For some reason, today was a really shitty day. I mean that quite literally. We had just finished cleaning up Amy’s pile when she decided to go again. Bets, who had already gotten two baths by that time, took the opportunity to roll—a full-out coat-yourself-in-poo extravaganza—in her mother’s steaming heap of poo. Then there was Max, who was simply being a shithead. For the past few days, Max has been particularly cantankerous, which makes the whole crew here a bit uneasy. If Max finally figures out that the guys in charge can’t do an ounce of legitimate damage to him, it’s all over. Over for training him, over for him learning, over for the trainers. Over. So, for now we’re staying away from Shithead and focusing on more pressing matters. Like de-pooing the Serengeti.
The Serengeti is the dubbed name of Toby and Max’s yard, the largest expanses of freedom on the property, reserved entirely for the bulls. For some reason, we clean Peggy, Booper, and Hank’s yard every day when they go out, but never Toby’s and Max’s. The result became evident as we drove the truck across the grassland in search (or was it more of a search for a spot where the truck could go without running over some ellie poo?) of frozen heaps of dung. Shit was everywhere. We filled the spreader once today and once yesterday, and yet there remains an insurmountable amount of shit out in that field. The best part about it is the fact that, as it is 25 degrees here, the piles come up in big frozen heaps, and can simply be hurled into the spreader. The issue of the matter is the actual act of getting those piles uprooted from the frozen earth. After a while we got the hang of it, loosening the piles and then carrying the mass heaps to the bed or simply chucking them overhead. You’ll be proud to hear that I’m a 4 for 5 kind of thrower, while everyone else, as of yet, has been 0 for 0’s. Seems that, despite the great differences in size and species and such, Toby and I may have something in common after all.
Tomorrow's topics: Jesus Cat, Bets the Escape Artist, and Wal-Mart Adventures.
Stay Tuned.
A while ago a fantastical rumor was proven true to me here. While I’d seen mice in cartoons scaring the living daylight out of elephants thousands of times their size, I never gave much thought to it being anything other than a massive (or tiny?) irony. The truth of it is as follows: mice carry a disease that thrives in fecal matter, the likes of which can easily find its way into an elephant’s food, should that mouse be gnawing on some tasty treat meant for the enormous beasts. How did I learn this? After a brief lecture on why we sweep the grain room twice. Not only do we sweep it twice, but we cover every open food bucket to ensure that our large friends here do not meet their demise at the hand of such an ironic fate. Apparently the amount of caution can never be too great—a few years back the Columbus Zoo lost all but one of their kangaroos to the same tragedy.
Today started like any other day, waking up early to a bowl of cereal and a cup of not-so-great coffee with a healthy amount of non-fat cream. Who thought of that paradox, anyhow? What was different today was not noticed until we reached the African barn. The walls. Dear Lord, the walls. Toby had apparently become bored with being stuck in his stall for days upon days due to the harsh weather, and had taken it upon himself to pepper—no, I’d say paint—the walls with his shit. Someone last night had had one hell of a time flinging shit every which way throughout the night. Thank god Max hadn’t followed suit. And of course, which wall had Toby thrown his shit? The one we cleaned yesterday—no big deal, buddy. For some reason, today was a really shitty day. I mean that quite literally. We had just finished cleaning up Amy’s pile when she decided to go again. Bets, who had already gotten two baths by that time, took the opportunity to roll—a full-out coat-yourself-in-poo extravaganza—in her mother’s steaming heap of poo. Then there was Max, who was simply being a shithead. For the past few days, Max has been particularly cantankerous, which makes the whole crew here a bit uneasy. If Max finally figures out that the guys in charge can’t do an ounce of legitimate damage to him, it’s all over. Over for training him, over for him learning, over for the trainers. Over. So, for now we’re staying away from Shithead and focusing on more pressing matters. Like de-pooing the Serengeti.
The Serengeti is the dubbed name of Toby and Max’s yard, the largest expanses of freedom on the property, reserved entirely for the bulls. For some reason, we clean Peggy, Booper, and Hank’s yard every day when they go out, but never Toby’s and Max’s. The result became evident as we drove the truck across the grassland in search (or was it more of a search for a spot where the truck could go without running over some ellie poo?) of frozen heaps of dung. Shit was everywhere. We filled the spreader once today and once yesterday, and yet there remains an insurmountable amount of shit out in that field. The best part about it is the fact that, as it is 25 degrees here, the piles come up in big frozen heaps, and can simply be hurled into the spreader. The issue of the matter is the actual act of getting those piles uprooted from the frozen earth. After a while we got the hang of it, loosening the piles and then carrying the mass heaps to the bed or simply chucking them overhead. You’ll be proud to hear that I’m a 4 for 5 kind of thrower, while everyone else, as of yet, has been 0 for 0’s. Seems that, despite the great differences in size and species and such, Toby and I may have something in common after all.
Tomorrow's topics: Jesus Cat, Bets the Escape Artist, and Wal-Mart Adventures.
Stay Tuned.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Coldest Days in 15 Years
January 5th, 6th, and 7th
Lately, the biggest news has been the arctic cold front blowing through our backyard. It’s absolutely freezing here, the coldest it’s been in the past 15 years, according to our trusty 10 AM newslady. The hardest part about it isn’t the brain freeze you get from standing outdoors for more than 5 minutes, or losing feeling in various fingers, toes, and appendages, but the fact that the poor elephants can’t go outside. When I came here I thought, how in the world do these animals live here? The fact is, Arkansas doesn’t get this cold. It just doesn’t. Until now. There’s not even any snow, just freezing, biting winds. And so the poor elephants stay indoors, bored stiff. Their boredom is starting to show, especially in Bets. Today she ran around in her stall, running into poor mom and flapping her ears, trumpeting as she ran in spastic circles. Turk got out her tire and took it into the stall, attached it to the floor hook with a chain so she couldn’t chuck it, and stepped back. Who knew a tire could be such fun, especially with only a 10-foot radius to work with. She’d pick it up and throw it, but the best part was when she’d throw it, pretend to forget about it, and back up into. It was a game she’d seemed to make up: “Ho hum, just walking along…I think I’ll back up here….OH MY GOSH WHAT DID I JUST STEP ON?!?!” She’d turn around in excitement, pretending to be surprised by its presence and proceed to curl her trunk around it and hurl it across the stall some more. Bets does a dance when she’s happy, where she almost skips around the stall, a sort of awkward gallop, with ears flayed out and head swinging back and forth. If it wasn’t for the huge smile on her face, you might think she was charging you, but the sense of utter joy is enough to know it’s a charge of ecstasy and not one of violence. Today was the first time I saw her do it, and I was rather pleased to bear witness. She’s also taken to approaching the gate and smushing her nose hard against the bars. It’s an odd and adorable spectacle, her little smushed face staring at yours. It took me a few days to finally realize her motives. Today she finally accomplished her purpose: make the gate move. When it finally budged she immediately jumped backwards, half out of surprise of her own small strength and half out of fear of Turk’s reprimand from across the room. She’s quite the troublemaker sometimes, always so curious, those crazy eyes always full of wonder.
As for the boys, they found their own fun. Max decided to start bugging Toby again, leaning as far as his chains allowed towards Toby’s stall and reaching his trunk towards him. Toby’s pretty oblivious to everything, so he just stood there as Max fondled his trunk and tried to pull him closer. The other day they apparently locked trunks and engaged in a makeshift tug-o-war. Max is young and one of the most dangerous of them all, as he doesn’t listen to commands well and tends to act out. But, there’s nothing wrong with a little trunk-holding from time to time. Toby eventually complied and went towards his bars to meet Max, and they both proceeded to interlock trunks for a short embrace. The gentlest side of Max I’ve ever seen. Of course, he then picked up some of his hay (Toby was out) and taunted Toby with it, sticking his hay-laden trunk through the bars to Toby’s cage and then retracting it. As karma kicked in, Toby finally snatched the hay from Max and proceeded to munch on it himself. Max’s loss, Toby’s gain. Max had been defeated in his attempt to taunt his simple friend.
The days have been long and cold lately, so it’s been rather monotonous and lethargic here. I’m sure I’ll have more to tell about escapes (Bets got out the other day) and adventures as soon as this weather clears up. Let’s hope it does. Love to all.
Amelia
Aunt Kim—you’ll be happy to know my nickname here is Blondie. : )
Lately, the biggest news has been the arctic cold front blowing through our backyard. It’s absolutely freezing here, the coldest it’s been in the past 15 years, according to our trusty 10 AM newslady. The hardest part about it isn’t the brain freeze you get from standing outdoors for more than 5 minutes, or losing feeling in various fingers, toes, and appendages, but the fact that the poor elephants can’t go outside. When I came here I thought, how in the world do these animals live here? The fact is, Arkansas doesn’t get this cold. It just doesn’t. Until now. There’s not even any snow, just freezing, biting winds. And so the poor elephants stay indoors, bored stiff. Their boredom is starting to show, especially in Bets. Today she ran around in her stall, running into poor mom and flapping her ears, trumpeting as she ran in spastic circles. Turk got out her tire and took it into the stall, attached it to the floor hook with a chain so she couldn’t chuck it, and stepped back. Who knew a tire could be such fun, especially with only a 10-foot radius to work with. She’d pick it up and throw it, but the best part was when she’d throw it, pretend to forget about it, and back up into. It was a game she’d seemed to make up: “Ho hum, just walking along…I think I’ll back up here….OH MY GOSH WHAT DID I JUST STEP ON?!?!” She’d turn around in excitement, pretending to be surprised by its presence and proceed to curl her trunk around it and hurl it across the stall some more. Bets does a dance when she’s happy, where she almost skips around the stall, a sort of awkward gallop, with ears flayed out and head swinging back and forth. If it wasn’t for the huge smile on her face, you might think she was charging you, but the sense of utter joy is enough to know it’s a charge of ecstasy and not one of violence. Today was the first time I saw her do it, and I was rather pleased to bear witness. She’s also taken to approaching the gate and smushing her nose hard against the bars. It’s an odd and adorable spectacle, her little smushed face staring at yours. It took me a few days to finally realize her motives. Today she finally accomplished her purpose: make the gate move. When it finally budged she immediately jumped backwards, half out of surprise of her own small strength and half out of fear of Turk’s reprimand from across the room. She’s quite the troublemaker sometimes, always so curious, those crazy eyes always full of wonder.
As for the boys, they found their own fun. Max decided to start bugging Toby again, leaning as far as his chains allowed towards Toby’s stall and reaching his trunk towards him. Toby’s pretty oblivious to everything, so he just stood there as Max fondled his trunk and tried to pull him closer. The other day they apparently locked trunks and engaged in a makeshift tug-o-war. Max is young and one of the most dangerous of them all, as he doesn’t listen to commands well and tends to act out. But, there’s nothing wrong with a little trunk-holding from time to time. Toby eventually complied and went towards his bars to meet Max, and they both proceeded to interlock trunks for a short embrace. The gentlest side of Max I’ve ever seen. Of course, he then picked up some of his hay (Toby was out) and taunted Toby with it, sticking his hay-laden trunk through the bars to Toby’s cage and then retracting it. As karma kicked in, Toby finally snatched the hay from Max and proceeded to munch on it himself. Max’s loss, Toby’s gain. Max had been defeated in his attempt to taunt his simple friend.
The days have been long and cold lately, so it’s been rather monotonous and lethargic here. I’m sure I’ll have more to tell about escapes (Bets got out the other day) and adventures as soon as this weather clears up. Let’s hope it does. Love to all.
Amelia
Aunt Kim—you’ll be happy to know my nickname here is Blondie. : )
Monday, January 4, 2010
Cold Day in the Wasteland
January 4th
Not much to tell today. It was cold outside all day, and the elephants couldn’t come out again. We spent the day doing basic and somewhat pointless chores. Tonight we’re planning on making some pizza, playing some board games, reading and watching Star Trek. I look forward to the physical break. It’s funny, considering I always want a mental break at school, and how it’s switched here…My muscles are started to rebel against my sudden use of them, but I’m working to keep them from cutting me off. The Bobcat bulldozer needs to be fixed. For the sake of my back, for the sake of not wheeling 15 wheelbarrows of poo every day. Please, Lord, get that damned machine fixed, ASAP. Amen.
Not much to tell today. It was cold outside all day, and the elephants couldn’t come out again. We spent the day doing basic and somewhat pointless chores. Tonight we’re planning on making some pizza, playing some board games, reading and watching Star Trek. I look forward to the physical break. It’s funny, considering I always want a mental break at school, and how it’s switched here…My muscles are started to rebel against my sudden use of them, but I’m working to keep them from cutting me off. The Bobcat bulldozer needs to be fixed. For the sake of my back, for the sake of not wheeling 15 wheelbarrows of poo every day. Please, Lord, get that damned machine fixed, ASAP. Amen.
Introductions
I thought I’d take today to introduce everyone, since I’ve yet to formally do so. While I have yet to really get to know the Asian elephants, I know their general demeanor, so we’ll just go off of that for now.
The Humans:
Turk: The head honcho of the group, a 5’ 2”, 22-year old, chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde with an attitude sharp enough to cut cold butter.
Stacey ,“Stilts”: As you might’ve guessed, the tall one. Thin as a rail, 27 years old, with a deep voice to suit her boyish demeanor, though she spends an awful lot of time on her hair. Also a chain-smoker.
Johnny: The Redneck of the group. Your typical Southern boy, though with less interpersonal skills. Wears a lot of camo and has got an accent to match. Also, as you might’ve presumed, a chain-smoker.
Pete: An intern from Stockton, New Jersey. He’s been here for 3 weeks already, along with Zoe, who happens to go to the same school as he does. He’s the “Watcher,” which I find refreshing from all of the “Doers”. He works, but he’s also always watching the elephants. You can tell he’s here for a reason.
Zoe: An intern also from New Jersey. She’s the complainer of the bunch. She mostly complains about how other people tell her she’s not doing a great job, but then again she’s on the phone a lot and tends not to work when someone of authoritative status isn’t around. She’s nice, but she’ll talk your ear off with all of the things wrong with the day.
Scott: The owner of the sanctuary, the go-to guy for all elephant training. You can’t handle an elephant, then he’s your guy. Not much of a talker, but man can he make an elephant obey. Sometimes I wonder how that works…
Heidi: Scott’s wife, in charge of mostly public relations for the sanctuary. Not very friendly either.
The Dogs:
Lucy, “Lou-Lou,” “Luce”: Australian Shepard. She’s an outside dog, just like every other animal here, but she loves all of the humans. She won’t eat human food you give to her until you leave, and after a while she’ll steal it from you if you aren’t paying attention. She barks all throughout the night, mostly at shadows, but has one hell of a heart. She and Frick enjoy playing “Dead Cat” and scaring me into thinking that the cat in her mouth is, in fact, frozen and dead, and not simply complying with Lucy’s wished to chew on him.
Hazel, “Chunky,” “Chunks”: A mutt, with the appearance of a small pug mixed with some other small, red-coated dogs. She’s your favorite lap dog, and not the bad kind. You give her the chance and she’s up in your lap, loving the heat. She loves marshmallows and has honed the skill of shivering on command in order to be pitied enough to be let inside. Her nickname is Chunky because she is, in fact, quite a Chunker.
The Cats:
Frick n’ Frack: The two infamous orange and white striped, cross-eyed cats of the bunch. They’ve got a thousand brothers here, it seems like, but they are always together, perched on the sill outside the cookhouse, waiting for some love to walk through the door.
The Elephants:
Amy: Betsy’s mom, a calm and complacent African elephant once in the circus. She’s a great mom, and probably too patient, considering how much time she spends inside with her little ball of curiosity.
Miss Bets, “Bets,” “Betsy”: An inquisitive little ball of energy, with crazy eyes that always seem to be rolling around in her head in search for excitement. She enjoys sticking her trunk through the bars at whoever’s closest, and likes to bug mom by standing in front of her when Amy’s trying to get somewhere.
Toby: African. The dope of the group, but impossible not to love. He was born with some hormone disorder that prevented him from ever going through puberty, so he’s small for his age. He also has much higher estrogen levels than any of the females here, so that may explain why he’s so uncharacteristically docile. Usually bulls can be pretty violent, or at least rambunctious.
Maximus, “Max”: The 7-year old African; first elephant to be conceived and birthed at the sanctuary, Bets being the second. He enjoys sticking her tusks through the bars of his cage to poke Toby, and is often bad at obeying commands. He likes to swing her head back in forth in a large pendulum-like motion, and tends to be the most hyper of the Africans.
Hank: The Asian Giant. Hank stands 16 feet tall at the shoulder, a frightening sight as such a small animal that I am in comparison. Hank was in the Ringling Bros. Circus before he came to the sanctuary, and has a long history of aggression and violence. We’re only ever allowed in the barn to let Hank out and back in when Scott is there, because he’s been known to charge on multiple occasions. He’s sort of the meany of the group.
Peggy: Asian. I haven’t gotten much of a feel for either Peggy or Booper, but I can tell you one thing about them: one of them sways and one of them nods. It’s the only way to really tell them apart. When they’re out in their enclosure, they tend to stand in the same spot, where Peggy sways back and forth while Booper nods or “boops” up and down.
Betty Boop, “Booper”: See above. Asian. Gail and I like to play a game when Booper’s outside, asking her questions like, “Is Gail the prettiest girl in the world?” to which Booper will adamantly agree.
Note: It’s harder to get to know the Asian elephants because the ones here have a stronger tendency towards violence. The elephants here aren’t exactly the best representations of their species, as many of them are here simply because no one else could handle them.
The Humans:
Turk: The head honcho of the group, a 5’ 2”, 22-year old, chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde with an attitude sharp enough to cut cold butter.
Stacey ,“Stilts”: As you might’ve guessed, the tall one. Thin as a rail, 27 years old, with a deep voice to suit her boyish demeanor, though she spends an awful lot of time on her hair. Also a chain-smoker.
Johnny: The Redneck of the group. Your typical Southern boy, though with less interpersonal skills. Wears a lot of camo and has got an accent to match. Also, as you might’ve presumed, a chain-smoker.
Pete: An intern from Stockton, New Jersey. He’s been here for 3 weeks already, along with Zoe, who happens to go to the same school as he does. He’s the “Watcher,” which I find refreshing from all of the “Doers”. He works, but he’s also always watching the elephants. You can tell he’s here for a reason.
Zoe: An intern also from New Jersey. She’s the complainer of the bunch. She mostly complains about how other people tell her she’s not doing a great job, but then again she’s on the phone a lot and tends not to work when someone of authoritative status isn’t around. She’s nice, but she’ll talk your ear off with all of the things wrong with the day.
Scott: The owner of the sanctuary, the go-to guy for all elephant training. You can’t handle an elephant, then he’s your guy. Not much of a talker, but man can he make an elephant obey. Sometimes I wonder how that works…
Heidi: Scott’s wife, in charge of mostly public relations for the sanctuary. Not very friendly either.
The Dogs:
Lucy, “Lou-Lou,” “Luce”: Australian Shepard. She’s an outside dog, just like every other animal here, but she loves all of the humans. She won’t eat human food you give to her until you leave, and after a while she’ll steal it from you if you aren’t paying attention. She barks all throughout the night, mostly at shadows, but has one hell of a heart. She and Frick enjoy playing “Dead Cat” and scaring me into thinking that the cat in her mouth is, in fact, frozen and dead, and not simply complying with Lucy’s wished to chew on him.
Hazel, “Chunky,” “Chunks”: A mutt, with the appearance of a small pug mixed with some other small, red-coated dogs. She’s your favorite lap dog, and not the bad kind. You give her the chance and she’s up in your lap, loving the heat. She loves marshmallows and has honed the skill of shivering on command in order to be pitied enough to be let inside. Her nickname is Chunky because she is, in fact, quite a Chunker.
The Cats:
Frick n’ Frack: The two infamous orange and white striped, cross-eyed cats of the bunch. They’ve got a thousand brothers here, it seems like, but they are always together, perched on the sill outside the cookhouse, waiting for some love to walk through the door.
The Elephants:
Amy: Betsy’s mom, a calm and complacent African elephant once in the circus. She’s a great mom, and probably too patient, considering how much time she spends inside with her little ball of curiosity.
Miss Bets, “Bets,” “Betsy”: An inquisitive little ball of energy, with crazy eyes that always seem to be rolling around in her head in search for excitement. She enjoys sticking her trunk through the bars at whoever’s closest, and likes to bug mom by standing in front of her when Amy’s trying to get somewhere.
Toby: African. The dope of the group, but impossible not to love. He was born with some hormone disorder that prevented him from ever going through puberty, so he’s small for his age. He also has much higher estrogen levels than any of the females here, so that may explain why he’s so uncharacteristically docile. Usually bulls can be pretty violent, or at least rambunctious.
Maximus, “Max”: The 7-year old African; first elephant to be conceived and birthed at the sanctuary, Bets being the second. He enjoys sticking her tusks through the bars of his cage to poke Toby, and is often bad at obeying commands. He likes to swing her head back in forth in a large pendulum-like motion, and tends to be the most hyper of the Africans.
Hank: The Asian Giant. Hank stands 16 feet tall at the shoulder, a frightening sight as such a small animal that I am in comparison. Hank was in the Ringling Bros. Circus before he came to the sanctuary, and has a long history of aggression and violence. We’re only ever allowed in the barn to let Hank out and back in when Scott is there, because he’s been known to charge on multiple occasions. He’s sort of the meany of the group.
Peggy: Asian. I haven’t gotten much of a feel for either Peggy or Booper, but I can tell you one thing about them: one of them sways and one of them nods. It’s the only way to really tell them apart. When they’re out in their enclosure, they tend to stand in the same spot, where Peggy sways back and forth while Booper nods or “boops” up and down.
Betty Boop, “Booper”: See above. Asian. Gail and I like to play a game when Booper’s outside, asking her questions like, “Is Gail the prettiest girl in the world?” to which Booper will adamantly agree.
Note: It’s harder to get to know the Asian elephants because the ones here have a stronger tendency towards violence. The elephants here aren’t exactly the best representations of their species, as many of them are here simply because no one else could handle them.
Betsy's Birthday
January 3rd
Today was our day off, and just in time. It finally decided to snow on us, and all of the elephants are stuck inside for the day. That means cleaning around them. Imagine that feat, maneuvering around a 7-ton animal. Quite a task. Gail and I went to Wal-Mart again to get hangers to line-dry our clothes and a bread pan to make cinnamon bread. Before we got to baking, we went down to African barn to watch Bets get her birthday present.
When the trainers are just standing around, it means something’s up. Bets has got this signal down. As we were waiting for the giant popsicle (made in an industrial sized bucket and frozen to a chain so as to hook to one of hooks on the floor to keep the thing from going flying every which way) to thaw out in an even bigger bucket of hot water, Bets was going bananas. She stood at the gate, ran in circles, trumpeted, and finally started to hop up and down, rearing up on her hind legs. When the gate was finally opened to let her in, Amy stuck her trunk out in front of the little’un and went in first. Mom wanted to get at that treat just as much as little Bets did. Bets can’t eat very hard things yet, so she had to wait for everything to thaw. Or, she’d just stick the fruit in her mouth and let it thaw. Smart girl. But, mom was more concerned about getting her share than Bets seemed to be. As the gate opened, Betsy went parading around the enclosure, sticking her trunk out the bars to everyone she passed. Perhaps a thank you of sorts? She finally went back to the treat waiting for her, where mom had already begun to chip away at the frozen block of sweets. Amy is 7 tons and could have easily crushed the thing, but she simply chipped away at it, the comparison of speed that of a human shaving a normal-size popsicle with their fingernail until it was all gone. She wanted to savor it, I suppose. Bets, on the other hand, was bent on bashing that thing to a million pieces. She let mom try it out, but soon realized the effort to be futile. Every so often Bets would grab the chain and yank the popsicle away from mom, if only to keep it from her for a few moments. Amy was tactile, positioning the popsicle upside-down where the chain wouldn’t hurt her foot while stepping on it. She’d chip off a bit at a time, pick up the shavings and enjoy her reward. Bets had had enough of this madness. She yanked the popsicle away one last time. Only this time, she picked it up. What is she doing, I thought to myself. Sure enough, she lifted the chain above her head, positioned the frozen hunk of fruit over her mouth and tossed it into the air. Thankfully, she missed, and didn’t smash herself in the face with the thing, but she did achieve her goal: smashed to smithereens. There were cheers all around. She quickly forgot about her feat and made another lap around the bars, waggling her trunk at everyone and waiting for a tongue scratch from anyone willing to oblige. Approval seemed to be the best kind of present.
Today was our day off, and just in time. It finally decided to snow on us, and all of the elephants are stuck inside for the day. That means cleaning around them. Imagine that feat, maneuvering around a 7-ton animal. Quite a task. Gail and I went to Wal-Mart again to get hangers to line-dry our clothes and a bread pan to make cinnamon bread. Before we got to baking, we went down to African barn to watch Bets get her birthday present.
When the trainers are just standing around, it means something’s up. Bets has got this signal down. As we were waiting for the giant popsicle (made in an industrial sized bucket and frozen to a chain so as to hook to one of hooks on the floor to keep the thing from going flying every which way) to thaw out in an even bigger bucket of hot water, Bets was going bananas. She stood at the gate, ran in circles, trumpeted, and finally started to hop up and down, rearing up on her hind legs. When the gate was finally opened to let her in, Amy stuck her trunk out in front of the little’un and went in first. Mom wanted to get at that treat just as much as little Bets did. Bets can’t eat very hard things yet, so she had to wait for everything to thaw. Or, she’d just stick the fruit in her mouth and let it thaw. Smart girl. But, mom was more concerned about getting her share than Bets seemed to be. As the gate opened, Betsy went parading around the enclosure, sticking her trunk out the bars to everyone she passed. Perhaps a thank you of sorts? She finally went back to the treat waiting for her, where mom had already begun to chip away at the frozen block of sweets. Amy is 7 tons and could have easily crushed the thing, but she simply chipped away at it, the comparison of speed that of a human shaving a normal-size popsicle with their fingernail until it was all gone. She wanted to savor it, I suppose. Bets, on the other hand, was bent on bashing that thing to a million pieces. She let mom try it out, but soon realized the effort to be futile. Every so often Bets would grab the chain and yank the popsicle away from mom, if only to keep it from her for a few moments. Amy was tactile, positioning the popsicle upside-down where the chain wouldn’t hurt her foot while stepping on it. She’d chip off a bit at a time, pick up the shavings and enjoy her reward. Bets had had enough of this madness. She yanked the popsicle away one last time. Only this time, she picked it up. What is she doing, I thought to myself. Sure enough, she lifted the chain above her head, positioned the frozen hunk of fruit over her mouth and tossed it into the air. Thankfully, she missed, and didn’t smash herself in the face with the thing, but she did achieve her goal: smashed to smithereens. There were cheers all around. She quickly forgot about her feat and made another lap around the bars, waggling her trunk at everyone and waiting for a tongue scratch from anyone willing to oblige. Approval seemed to be the best kind of present.
Just a Note
In order to get Internet I have to go sit in a freezing car across from the office that is no longer in use but is the only place with wireless. That’s why all of the dates on the blog are different than the dates I have on top of each post, because I post 2 or 3 days at a time, to save myself from the journey to the cold abyss.
Toby's Getaway
January 2nd
Today’s the first day anything here really felt like home. Because of the biting 26 degrees, that is. Every month on the first Saturday is Visitor’s Day for the sanctuary, which brought in 200 people last month, but only 15 this month. We went about our daily duties, letting everyone out early so that the visitors could goggle at the enormity of the animals they came to see. Amy and Bets (mom and daughter) were let out into their yard for the first time in a while, because Bets is still young (2) and very sensitive to the cold. They’ve been cooped up for a while now, and Bets was happy as a pig in mud, or I suppose an elephant in mud, to finally be outdoors. She puts her trunk everywhere. I think it’s similar to a baby’s oral fixation stage, where everything must be explored orally—hands, toes, fingers, toys, etc. So, Bets is always shoving her trunk in her mouth, wagging it at whoever’s closest to the cage, and bothering poor mom. She’s got crazy eyes, wide with an inquisitiveness that even the electric fence can’t hold back. Today she waggled her trunk at Turk while she was hosing down the enclosure until she came over. Bets held up her trunk, and opened her mouth wide to receive a nice tongue scratch. Apparently it’s the equivalent of a neck rub. Toby loves them too. The watermelon we got yesterday ended up going to Toby, as Bets would get her birthday popsicle tomorrow. Toby’s septum in his trunk was cut when he was younger, or he was born that way, meaning he can pick up bigger things and shove more in his mouth at once. Which is exactly what he did. Turk set the watermelon down in his pen and he stood obediently away in the corner until Turk gave the alright. He trotted over to the fruit and fondled it with excitement, finding the best way to grasp on. He then found his grip, picked up the watermelon and put the whole thing in his mouth. Gone. Absolutely gone. And man was his smile big; the first one I’ve seen from him so far. He was lovin’ it. Later on, it proved to be Toby’s lucky day indeed. Man was he getting a break. All of the elephants were in their enclosures, but Toby was out. As we backed up the blue truck to head back to the cookhouse Stacey gasped.
“What?” I said, looking over my shoulder where her gaze was directed. Toby was out of his enclosure. It was visitor’s day, and an elephant was loose. Oh joy.
“Toby’s out! Shit!” She half whispered, half yelled. We all froze.
“Call Turk!” I said. Stacey fumbled with her phone, dialing Turk’s number. Two minutes later Turk came sprinting to the enclosure, where the gate was wide open.
“Who in the hell left that open?” Stacey said, wide-eyed. Heidi, one of the owners, was with Turk, and went to close the gate. We all ended up smiling, letting out one huge, simultaneous breath of relief. The best part about it? Toby left his enclosure, stood outside the gate for a second, looked around, and went back in. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even realize what he’d missed. He was a bit dopey like that. That’s why he’s my favorite. He’s simple.
While that was a highlight of the day, there was an even better moment to be had. Usually the interns don’t get near the elephants. Only trainers are allowed in the cages, leaving interns as curious bystanders. Today Turk and Johnny coaxed Gail and I into Amy and Bets’ cage to clean Amy. They handed us each a brush as Johnny held onto Amy’s tusk to steady her, and we scrubbed away. I peeled off my gloves after a while, realizing that this may be the only chance I get to feel their skin. I used my left hand to brace myself on her stomach as I scrubbed her side, and couldn’t help but smile. Their skin is nothing like they say. You expect it to be rough, have no give, feel like a thick layer of callous. Her side felt like soft leather, and when you leaned into her you could feel the flesh under your hand give way to your weight. Sure, they’re thick-skinned, but not like they say they are. It’s like this layer of sagging armor protecting an ocean of tender flesh beneath. Thick-skinned? Sure. Impenetrable? No way. Johnny told me to scrub hard with the steel brush, saying she couldn’t feel it, but I couldn’t help letting up on the pressure when I felt her skin. There’s no way she couldn’t feel that.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
The Ropes
January 1st, 11:01
Today we woke up to an early morning Arkansas chill. 8:00 AM, to be exact. We rolled out of bed to layer on clothes, excited for the day ahead; annoyed to be up so early. We met in the cookhouse, poured ourselves cheap coffee and sat in wait. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. Turk’s car pulled up. One applesauce cup, two slices of banana bread and several large gulps of coffee later, we were in the infamous blue truck and off to start the day. We went to Asian barn to set half a bale of hay out for Peggy and Booper for when they were let out of the barn and into their enclosure. We then drove to African barn, where I was shown the ropes on all the how-to’s of barn-cleaning. Who’da thunk such a technique existed? You shovel the poo, sweep out the hay, sweep out the dust, wheel it all out, turn on the hose and spray that sucker clean until she shines. Until the red mud is out of all its comfortable knooks and crannies and all of the foam from the piss and mineral deposits is washed clear. The “foaming floor” rule, they call it. If it’s still foaming, you ain’t done. And wasn’t that the truth. A cage no larger than 30 by 30 feet, if that, and how long does it take? Oh, an hour if you’re good. Turk later boasted, “On a good day, 1 hour and 17 minutes. Alone.” She beamed, a glint of pride momentarily overpowering the sheen of dust plastered to her face. It was an art. An art I prayed I would learn, lest I tromped back to the cookhouse soaked every day. Lesson Learned #1: Rain boots in the morning. Work boots in the afternoon.
Just before we cleaned African barn, Toby and Max were let out into their enclosure. And, as if they knew what was coming, they each left a good basketball-sized dump, steaming, on their cage floors. That and a jet stream of piss unlike any other I’d ever seen. After we finished up, mucked the grates and swept out all the rest of the hay, we met up at Asian barn to finish up some more dirty work over there, cleaning out Hank’s enclosure.
“Hank, Jesus…why’d you have to shit in the puddle?” Zoe cursed. She was the complainer of the bunch, but a fun one, nonetheless. Pete cast her a sideways glance. After that we unloaded and loaded and unloaded 72 bales of hay. This is where I learned the bump n’ jump, as I like to call it. In order to get the bale successfully onto the truck, you must “bump” it up with your knee as high as you can and then push it to send it flying. I added jump and omitted push for both rhyming’s sake and the importance of jumping so as not to lose your balance in the crevices between bales that were busy swallowing Zoe whole. There was also hay humping. This is a refined technique used to straighten out a wayward and crooked bale of hay, essentially returning it back to its normal rectangular shape, as it should be. The act, in and of itself, was entirely difficult not to both laugh and blush over. The sight of a small but spunky 22-year old blonde humping a bale of hay.
“Looks like you’ve had too much practice, Stilts,” Pete called to Stacey. Classic.
We later got to watch as Hank reentered his barn, eager for his bread, tree branches, and hay awaiting him inside. But before he was allowed to eat, he had to prove his worth. Scott stood in the corner, barely audible, but somehow Hank knew all the mumblings by heart.
“Kneel,” he said. Hank knelt.
“Down,” he said. Hank lay down.
“One knee,” he said. Hank got back up onto one knee.
“Up,” he said.” Hank got up. “Wave.” Hank waggled his trunk back and forth in the air.
“Shake,” he said. Hank shook his whole body, starting at his head, rippling down to his back and huge belly, like a wet dog.
“Speak.” Hank raise his trunk so that we could see his enormous mouth, letting out the sound of 100 seals barking in chorus, mixed with the blasting trumpet of an elephant.
“Alright,” Scott said. Hank turned to his food, glad to be done with it all, and proceeded to wrap his trunk around the food in front of him like a snake constricting its prey, grabbing as much as he could before raising it to his mouth to be devoured. From floor to mouth, a giant 12 feet. From floor to shoulder, 16 feet. This elephant was enormous.
They all went for the bread first. Today there were blueberry bagels. Other days there were Moon Pies. The next day there would be a belated birthday party for Betsy, the new African baby. They had made her a fruit popsicle to be presented to her on Saturday, visiting day for the county. Later we all went to Wal-Mart and got her a watermelon of our own.
Friday, January 1, 2010
From Drunkard to Line-Drying
December 31st, 11:06 PM
It’s New Year’s Eve and where have I wound up? Not tubing with friends, nor drinking myself silly on cheap champagne, but in the dark bowels of rural Arkansas: the Elephant Sanctuary. Hank, Peggy, Toby, Max, Betsy, Amy, and Booper are all asleep, tucked away somewhere I have yet to explore. Or will ever, for that matter. My dreams may have been a little crushed when Turk, the head intern, told us not to approach the elephants, not to address them, and not to look them in the eye. “Why in the world not?” I wanted to ask, but thought it inappropriate. “They get crappy,” she said, “don’t be mistaken—these are not caring or affectionate animals.” Well there they go, dreams dashed to bits.
Arriving at the sanctuary was a slightly tumultuous journey, from Detroit airport to Charlotte to Little Rock. My favorite part of the 3-legged trip?
“Do you drink?” says the 20-something year old sitting in 14 C next to me.
“Er—” I started, not sure where this was going. “Yes?” He smiled with approval.
“Would you like a cocktail?” Oh, dear Lord.
“I’m alright, thank you though.” He looked crushed.
“It’s my coping mechanism,” he said. I could tell by the already beer-laden breath oozing from his mouth into my nostrils. These seats were too damn close.
For the rest of the flight he battered me with questions, all too deep for a strange encounter with a communications major from Cal State I just met on a plane ride to North Carolina. Then there was the kicker, the real doozy that left me questioning both his intelligence and his true intentions in all this seemingly meaningless banter.
“Is it bad,” he started, “that I feel unsafe?” He pointed to the man sitting ahead of us in the other row who had a Koran open on his table tray.
“What do you mean?” I asked, hoping his answer wouldn’t be what I thought it was.
“That he’s reading Islamic. Is that bad? Is that ignorant?” He looked genuninely concerned. I thought for a moment, and then nodded my head violently.
“Yes, that is bad,” I said aloud, thinking to myself that there was no such language as Islamic. He didn’t seem phased by my response. You can’t win them all.
After getting off the plane I met Gail and her dad at the baggage claim. We went to a tiny Chinese restaurant where the waiter didn’t understand the word “vegetarian” and said thank you every time he left the table, as if we had done him a great honor by emptying our glasses, requiring him to refill them. I then took it upon myself to go to the gas station next door to get milk while Gail input directions into the GPS. Going in, a woman of 40 or 50 stood with a brown paper bag in her hand, asking an elderly man when the next casino bus was. Inside were three thuggish men at checkout. As I passed, I caught a stench of weed heavier than I’ve ever smelled, even in the halls of Fairchild House at Oberlin College. One of them looked at me for too long as I passed. To be safe, I checked the expiration date on the milk. 12/31/09. Today. Super. I quickly walked out, not looking back as one of the men called after me.
“Well we are on the wrong side of town!” I said, smiling nervously at Gail. “Let’s go.” She laughed, asking why. “Trust me, let’s go.” I watched the men get into a spotless white Cadillac that, judging by their demeanors, could only have been paid for through the buying and selling of copious amounts of cocaine. Or they worked hard for it. Who knows.
Finding the sanctuary was no easy thing. We turned around a few times, fumbling through the darkness of the town. No street lights here, just like home. We finally found it, and drove up, greeted by a pug and an Australian Sheppard. We’d meet the cats later. Fick, Fack, and Dixie. Dix, for short. A crack-addict of a feline. The rules were lain, the bags unpacked, the tour given. In the laundry room I saw no dryer.
“Is the dryer in there?” I pointed across the hall. Turk, the head honcho of the interns, gave me a “You dumb bitch” kind of look.
“We line dry. It’s out there,” she said, pointing outside. And what if it rained? Later that night I told Gail we might have to find ourselves a Laundromat.
“It won’t be bad,” she said, “jeans will be stiff, but it will be fine.” I frowned.
“I turn off lights. I take 5-minute showers. I don’t kill people. I deserve my damn dryer.” She backed off, laughing.
It was time for bed. The next day started at 8:00 AM sharp. Coffee and a few slaps in the face by the morning chill was enough to get me up and running for what lay ahead. Onward, ho.
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