An elephant and us
Some children go to the zoo and after dog biscuits to an elephant. He enjoys eating them…why then do these children feel guilty?
It was a very cold spring \day when we went to the zoo. The elephant house was warm and filled with a rather nice musty smell. And an elephant too of course, the elephant was very wide awake and seemed quite pleased to see us. We took some harmless dog biscuits with us three were not many-about a dozen. We carried the biscuits in a coffee tin.
We gazed at the elephant for a while. We then got out the tin of walnut-sized dog biscuits and started handing them over to the elephant. We gave the biscuits one by one, to make them last, each of us taking it in turns.
There is something fascinating about an elephant’s trunk-long and rubbery, creased and dusty. Swooping out and fumbling round for whatever’s going. Or just waiting for whatever favors come its way Pink side, like a mobile nostril. The huge creature daintily took each small dog biscuit, curled its trunk round and thrust the biscuits right down the bottom of its vast throat. Then it did a kind of dance-shuffle, shuffle, oomph, oomph, with those great feet in the dust. It was a kind of thank –you dance. Then it uncurled its trunk again, swooping down towards the tin and was either given or daintily picked out another biscuit, only one. Soon the trunk was swinging back for the next one.
Then the last biscuit was gone, Down Swooped the trunk. Round and round the bottom of the tin that pinkish. Puffing up the small lest crumbs. Then out came the trunk. And a slight look of disappointment came into the tiny winking eyes. I want many biscuits, they seemed to say. But we had not any left.
That was them it happened. Out flashed the trunk again, like lightning this time. None of your gently jungle swaying swoops. And, before anyone of us could even bat an eyelid, the tin was snatched into the air and thrust straight down into its huge mouth. We were petrified. We stood gaping while those huge v-shaped lips closed on the tin. There was an extremely alarming crunch, Then another Kerrunch. The look in those eyes was really wicked now.
Unable to move or do anything but gasp, awful visions flashed before my eyes of the twisted tin descending into the elephant’s stomach. Crunch, How much did elephants cost? Probably thousands and thousands of pounds, how could we pay for an elephant? Crunch. There would be a court case and we would be rightly called thoughtless stupid people who killed an elephant, Crunch. Suddenly the elephant threw up its trunk again, stuck it into its mouth and with the air of a magician, produced a bent and battered object which had once been a harmless old coffee.
We all have a sigh of relief and even smiled. Elephant are clearly just an intelligent as we had thought. As if they did not know the difference between a healthy dog biscuit and a tin! But we were not going to be let off as lightly as that. After some playful waving about, the elephant calmly put the remains of the tin back into its mouth again, crunch.
It was too much. We slunk out into the cold wind feeling very hot and bothered. We went home and for many days had horrible dreams. We dreamt of opening the newspaper and reading headlines like:- But nothing happened. We tried to forget it, but could not.
The next time we went the elephant was still there, but there was a notice on the door. Visitors are requested not to feed the elephant.
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