India, Part 4: The Elephant Story

Elephants had come to be my favorite of all animals on thise trip to India. I really love all animals and find most to be quite extraordinary, but the elephant, in all its gentle giant wisdom, amazes me.

I will never forget the story one of my students told me. I love a good story. I love a good story-teller. The person that hunkers down deep, stares off into the distance as if to see the scene from which they are recounting their tale. Here was a small child, educating me on the elephants.

He told me the differences between the African elephant and the Asian elephant. The last of 3 remaining elephant types that exist today. The differences in their sizes, 'hair', ears and other physical characteristics. To me, an elephant was an elephant was an elephant. It was the first time I learned that elephants were in grave danger of becoming extint. (Since 2004, actually, the ban on killing elephants has been lifted, putting elephants at an even greater risk of poaching).

They are highly social animals who take care of one another. It was said during the tale that elephants will even visit one anothers' graves from time to time. The story that amazed me was that of an elephant who met the unfortunate fate of being hunted by a poacher.

And so this poacher came upon the elephant and shot him down. He left this elephant to die, and decided to return upon his death so he could take the elephants tusks.

A few weeks later he returned. He was shocked to find the elephant was still alive, being cared for by the other elephants. They were bringing this downed elephant food and water. How the story of this particular elephant ends is unknown to me. I suppose I could figure out the rest as well as anyone could, but I would rather not think about it.

I was entranced by this story. Over this summer I learned a lot about local animals and animals, in general. I became vegetarian on this trip- mainly by default since meat foods were not provided to us- and I became so much more aware of the balance between humans and animals. A very delicate balance, indeed.