Dogs Have the Strangest Friends by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Author:Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson [Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Children's
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

How Stupid Can a Man Be? The Elephant and Me

This is a story about what happened to me before I knew anything at all about elephants. In fact, what I knew about elephants, or rather what I thought I knew, was all wrong, because I had learned about elephants from reading Babar and from going to the circus. You cannot know what the real animal is like from that!

One day in 1988 I was visiting south India with a friend and two children. We were staying on an island that is a game preserve. Early in the morning we left the teenagers asleep and walked several miles deep into the forest. Suddenly we saw a herd of wild elephants peacefully grazing. My friend stopped at a respectful distance and began to take some pictures.

I said to her, “Why stop so far away? Come on, let us introduce ourselves to them.”

She thought I was crazy to think I could walk right up to a herd of wild elephants and talk to them. She was right, but I did not know it. “Jeff, these are not circus animals, these are not tame elephants. They are wild, and you cannot get too close.”

“Nonsense,” I said, refusing to listen, “just watch.”

I approached to within a few feet of the largest elephant I have ever seen. She looked like a house compared to the small baby next to her. I clapped my hands to get her attention, and then I began chanting in the language of ancient India, Sanskrit, thinking she would recognize this as a holy language and be friendly with me. I even had the fantasy that perhaps she would bend down and let me ride her through the forest! That’s how ignorant I was.

Well, she lifted her head up, saw me standing a few feet from her baby, and flapped her ears. I turned to my friend, as if to say, “See, she is waving hello.” But an elephant, I now know, waves her ears in anger, not in greeting. A second later the enormous animal trumpeted so loudly that it made my whole body shake. Then she charged.

I could not believe this was happening to me. It was like a moment from a very bad, frightening dream. I turned and ran, screaming, “Help! Help! An elephant is after me!”

But there was nobody to hear me except my friend, and she had hidden her eyes in her hands, afraid of what she was about to see. I ran wildly to a tree, thinking that perhaps I could climb it and be safe. But the branch I tried to reach was too tall, and I failed. It turned out I was lucky, for later I was told by an elephant expert that had I climbed the tree, the elephant could easily have plucked me down like a ripe plum and stepped on me. I ran blindly through the tall grass, stumbled, and fell to the ground. I looked up to see the elephant stop and use her trunk to try to smell me out.

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