Elephant Walk (477 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.6 on 7 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Id (View user info) at 2005-08-21 17:19:49 EDT
The following is based on actual events.
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Noisy, noisy children. All around they clamor and squirm, poke and prod at one another, all trying to improve their position in the growing crowd forming by the exhibit. I don't so much mind them as much as consider them one of the necessary evils of zoo-going. Popcorn, bright sunny days, bored animals, noisy packs of school children. All go hand in hand.
The noisy, noisy children were beginning to be droned out by the rising voices of the ever-increasing throng. The zoo had just opened only minutes before. I had waited with the crowd outside the entrance, and though I didn't strike conversation with anyone, the mood was obvious. You could feel the anticipation, the childlike enthusiasm swirling around the head of each person there. Strangers were talking amongst themselves, the usual barriers of personal space and the normal indifferences of humanity cast aside on this day. Conversation, I suppose, is easier when everyone has the same thing on their minds.
The staff approached the gate, the volume of the crowd (of which I was in) hushed suddenly, all looking to confirm if, indeed, the moment had arrived, if the reason for their jovial gathering had truly come. The gates were opened, and the masses poured forth. Those in front engaged in that fast paced walking one does when they wish to get somewhere quickly, but don't wish to appear desperate enough to actually run to it. I myself hung back, allowed the aggressive ones to pass. After all, twas not like this was a one-time show.
10 minutes passed, enough time for the crowd to make its way through a portion of the Burnet Park Zoo of Syracuse, New York, and to come upon the exhibit. The children scrambled to the front, slipping their arms through the low steel bars separating man from concrete moat, which in turn separated man from the animal we had all come to see. The growing excitement was truly intoxicating: nowhere was to be found the avoidant glances and bowed heads you usually run into while out in public, nowhere were mothers telling children to Stay Away From Strangers, or to Come Here, or to stop fidgeting, acting silly, or any other activity that make children children.
In short, I was witnessing something I should.
Then, with no warning, no triumphant music, no zookeeper with a bullhorn asking us all how we were doing, came the elephants. Tall, enormous, and all other things elephantine they were. Each marching single file from the large, tan building that housed them, each larger and therefore (in the crowd's view) more magnificent then the last. The people gave a loud cheer, the noisy children beckoning their parents to Come See! Come See! as if they weren't already enthralled with the spectacle before them. Along the great beasts came two of their keepers, a man and a woman. Though they were some distance away from me, I could vaguely see the beaming looks of pride and elation upon their faces. No doubt some lottery had been drawn to determine the lucky pair that would bask in the glory of this momentous day.
The initial cheer died down, replaced with a subdued murmur, all the crowd (of which I was in) waiting for the reason they came, the reason this day had happened at all, perhaps the reason why the very sun had risen in the skies above this day.
After the fourth and largest elephant yet had plodded out, the world (and more importantly, the crowd assembled) was introduced to Kedar, a 2-day old baby elephant.
The crowd (of which I was in) broke into the most powerful AWWWWW!!! I had ever been privy to.
Kedar (it means "powerful" I was informed from someone in the crowd) trotted around the tree-trunk legs of the largest elephant, his mother, Indy (who had given birth now to 4 baby Asian elephants, I was told by someone else in the crowd), showing no fear of the surroundings presented to him. Certainly, the little pachyderm was cute, as all creatures of this planet tend to be.
What is it about the young of this earth? Why do we feel, without almost no exception, a universal urge to embrace and fawn over the miniature versions of the creatures of this Earth? Certainly, this is something humans do alone, but to what end? What purpose, from a strictly evolutionary standpoint, does feeling affection towards the offspring of another animal, one that would possibly kill or devour us it when grew older? Did the child of a Cro-Magnon one day spare a baby wolf from her father's spear because she felt some pang of maternal need toward the animal?
For surely, Kedar's elephant mother felt no such good will towards the noisy, noisy children clamoring as close a possible to her offspring.
Or does she?......
But yes, Kedar the Strong was something to get "mushy" over. Something about the smallness of his entirety. Small eyes, small legs, small trunk. And the way Kedar moved....it conveyed a type of innocence, a confident stride that did not yet know the sting of a wayward rock, or the realities of the iron bars that would keep him, nor certainly the burdens of stress or age. Twas fair to observe that the little creature's mannerisms mirrored the light-hearted, whimsical essence of the gathering observing it.
Then, Kedar the Cute Zoo Attraction zipped through his mothers legs, and dove head-first into the 10 foot deep pool of water that was part of the elephant's enclosure.
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What is it about the human mind, that pauses for that one long, terrible moment, when it is confronted with something That Should Not Be? When your body screams for action, when your lungs breathe deep and your blood madly rushes through your veins, yet you can not move. Too caught up are you in the moment, paralyzed by some awful force to take heed of the situation.
Too enamored and entranced with that knowledge that you are watching something That Should Not Be Seen.
Kedar drowned. The baby elephant died.
True, he did not pass on in that very pool that very instant. He passed on 10 hours later from massive water intake within his digestive tract. But surely, who wants to hear that? And certainly, what does that matter in the end?
For without doubt, it does not matter to all of us, who witnessed the accident that day. I suppose I could describe to you the ensuing panic that followed the imperiled pachyderm's fateful plunge, going into uproarious detail of just how much noise the noisy, noisy children made when their frightened mothers whisked them away from the ugliness, hoping to shield them from what saw as impending doom. And they would have succeeded, had it not been for the great and terrible moment I spoke of a few paragraphs past. The instant when the crowd (of which I was in) fell silent, when the harmony was shattered, when the Rockwellian dream that was this gathering was brought low.
I might say, in that moment, that I could just barely make out the very eye of God, winking at all of our horrified faces in that dread moment between realization and action.
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Is there a moral to this? Possibly.
Am I interested in exploring what that may be? No.
Suffice it is to say that Kedar the Briefly Lived walked into our open hearts that day, then swiftly reminded us that such eager love can be fucking stupid.
User Reviews
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-08-21 20:04:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Dear god that's horrible. And god help me, I laughed at the moral to the story. I thought elephants could swim? Although since he was a baby and all... Still. Someone should have told him that.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2005-08-21 18:45:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Id, I was just pleased to see a good post go up after all of the hoo-ha going on right now.
See all the old posts cycling the MRR? That's my quiet protest.
Submitted by Id (user info) at 2005-08-21 18:40:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2005-08-21 18:04:13 (#)
Ranking: 2
WOO! There WILL be life after Urbanes gynae bits!
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Submitted by lojope (user info) at 2005-08-21 18:31:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I cried when I read this in the paper. I cried harder when I read your versian.
Submitted by GaidinCanuck (user info) at 2005-08-21 18:27:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"The following is based on actual events."
Really? That's fucked up. But funny, in a cruel sort of way.
Submitted by Stin (user info) at 2005-08-21 18:04:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WOO! There WILL be life after Urbanes gynae bits!
Submitted by ArtificialInsanity (user info) at 2005-08-21 17:52:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Baby animals? I can't even stand baby humans, the ugly little bastards.