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.