It Shrinks?

 

The Old Bull Elephant, an unknown number of years old, many decades if not a century, was a legend in his own time, a legend across the limitless plains of the Serengeti and in the rain forest jungles of the Congo.  The continent of Africa had been his home and stomping grounds since before Men had begun counting, at least such as the Old Bull Elephant had noticed.

Over the course of his lifetime he had traveled to many wondrous places and seen many inspiring sights; mountains that made the rest of the world seem minute; the mighty waterfalls of the Victoria River and the baking sands of the deserts to the North; the multitudes of the warriors of the Zulus, spread across the valley from mountain range to mountain range, with their spear and shields reflecting the sunlight, their weapons sparkling in the bright day like the stars in the night sky; the Prides of lions roaring their mastery of all creatures, except for the Bull Elephant and his herd whom the lions dared not attack; the multitude of cows he had mounted and the uncounted babies that had sprung from his loins; the simplicity of a world where his kind roamed free and unmolested, to the coming of the hunters with their long rifles, the bullets from which could not be ignored or denied; from a landscape of a simple past, to a new day where he and his had been assigned to a specific range where they were slowly but surely being annihilated. 

Yes, the Old Bull Elephant had seen more than his fair share of sunrises and sunsets over the course of his overly long and interesting life and his travels and tromping across the topography of his homeland; and he was now engaged upon his last long trudge to the graveyard of his ancestors, the Elephant Graveyard, his final journey.

He didn’t know it but he was a movie star.  From the original 1920 film to the ending of the television series in 1968, five characters had played the role of Tarzan and during the filming of the series the Old Bull Elephant had had a recurring guest role.
While the Tarzan show had been fictional, the Old Bull Elephant’s life had been totally realistic.  One tusk was broken off at the root and his left ear was shredded from the many duels he had fought with younger, presumptuous pretenders to his throne.  He had defended his herd and his honor countless times over the years, never once losing a battle.

Now, in his olden years, he was rheumatic and arthritic; half blind and his digestive system was failing him.  Worse, his skin, especially that certain portion encompassing his scrotum had stretched and wrinkled and hung down past the knee joint of his hind legs.  His old scrotum swung like the clapper of a large bell with each step, scraping itself raw against his legs with each stride.  While that part of him had outlived its usefulness, the attached pendulous projection of his penis still worked; but the effort required in the chase, the seduction, mounting and the conquest of cows seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.  And that was a message that the dimmest old bull should heed.

Some, particularly the proper and elderly old cows of his herd were offended by the fact that the Old Bull Elephant brought up the subject of his scrotum in every conversation, but they, not having such equipment, could not appreciate the constant attention its raw condition demanded as it banged back and forth against his hind legs as he walked.  It was a condition only the male of his species could fully comprehend.

Yes, looking back at his life from the viewpoint of an accomplished stud and master of his domain, it had been grand.  But now, the equipment, particularly his scrotum, had outlasted the expected useful lifetime of wear and tear and it was time to check out of the hotel, to do a Hemingway so to speak; so to the Elephant Graveyard he lumbered, slow but sure.

During the journey, in the mid-1990’s, one late evening the Old Bull Elephant had been lounging under the branches and against a Marula tree; he was hidden in the night shadows and unseen by the wanna-be Tarzans and Jane’s, in their luxurious hut built for the yuppie tourist explorer trade, that was not more than twenty-five yards away.  The hut the tourists relaxed in and that they thought was their protection against the African wild night could have been easily blown over by one of the Old Bull Elephants more modest farts.

The Old Bull Elephant weighed 25,000 pounds and stood fourteen feet tall at the shoulder.  Had the tourists known he was there they would have probably grabbed their cameras and burnt up all their rolls of film for this totally surprise photo shoot – after they had cleaned the crap out of their trousers from the shock and fright of this unexpected and not-on-the-tour-guide encounter.  The tourists were lounging about and watching a TV show brought to them by the wonder of satellite television.

He was relaxed and enjoying the cooling air the sunset brought, while the television show had played and the Old Bull Elephant had listened to the comic exchange of the characters voices.

Elephants are possessed of extraordinary olfactory senses and their hearing also is more than excellent, making up for their short-sighted vision.  The smells of the tourists; the artificially induced odors composed of soaps, shampoos, perfumes, colognes and their underlying, never to be totally erased, funky carnivorous human smell had almost convinced him to withdraw and find more pleasant surroundings until he heard the particular voice of one of the women characters on the TV show and her dialogue and it’s meaning seeped into his sleepy brain.

Elephants are also possessed of an amazing degree of intelligence.  The elephant brain weighs about eleven pounds; its mass is larger than any other mammal or animal on Earth.  The largest whale, by comparison, has a body mass twenty times the elephant but the whale’s brain is only half as large.  The elephant brain, its structure and complexity, is very similar to the human brain with as many neurons in the cortex region. Elephants are highly intelligent, displaying complex behaviors such as grief, learning, family, mimicry, art, play, a sense of humor, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and, even, possibly, language.

Elephants as artists?  Indeed, give an elephant a canvas, paint and a brush and prepare yourself to see the abstract masterpiece that is wrought.  Look upon the vision that is transferred from the elephants mind, via their delicate trunk holding the brush, to the picture produced and it will boggle the mind.

But we meander – where were we?

Oh yes, the TV show.

The Old Bull Elephant listened attentively to the characters dialoque and he heard the following:

Male character – “Women know about shrinkage, right?’
Female character – “Shrinkage?  You mean clothes?”
Male character – “No.  You know? (wink wink)”
Female character – “It shrinks?”
Male character – “Considerable shrinkage.”
Female character – “I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things.”

The Old Bull Elephant was intelligent enough to get the gist of the dialogues meaning without even seeing the action on the screen.

“Huh”, he thought, “Maybe your pitiful human thing-a-ma-jig shrinks but not mine.”
The TV show went to a commercial and the Old Bull Elephant soon tired of the idiotic jabber related to disgusting fast-food meat by-products, detergents and something called Viagra so he ambled away to search for a more pleasing resting place.

As he moved his massive frame gingerly through the surrounding brush, as soft and sure footed as a cat, on his final journey, he reflected on what he had heard and thought, “But, I wish my damn scrotum would shrink.”

///

 

{ This story is dedicated to the Elephants; Tarzan, Jane and Cheetah, and,  “The Hamptons” episode of the Seinfeld show. }

In 1930, there were between five and 10 million wild African elephants, plying the entire African continent in large bands. Just 60 years later, when they were added to the international list of critically endangered species, only about 600,000 were scattered across a few African countries. Today that number is likely less than 300,000.