You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

THE ELEPHANT

Theme: We humans fail to recognize intelligence in other animals.

My family and I were traveling to our home in Oregon for summer vacation, following our second year in Saudi Arabia where I was teaching at King Faisal University. We had stopped to visit three cities in India. While in Jaipur we all suffered from a serious case of dysentery. When we recovered sufficiently to travel, we flew to Bangkok. There, in the Golden Horse Hotel, we had to decide whether we should we take a three day side trip to Kathmandu or continue on to Japan. It was a choice of whether to dive back into another underdeveloped country where tainted food was a risk, or proceed to security of Japan and teriyaki. We talked about it and voted. The tally was 3 to 2 in favor of taking the side trip.

The next afternoon we flew to Kathmandu. It was dark by the time we arrived at a budget hotel. It was located on the top of a hill on the outskirts of the city. We slept on straw mattresses. In the morning on the way to breakfast we picked up a tourists newspaper from the hotel reception counter. The dining room had large windows looking east. We had a view of the sun rising over a walled Buddhist temple with a large golden stupa dome on our left, and on our right, the view was of a wide downward sloping field upon which a number of locals, both men and women, were carefully climbing to find a spot on which to relieve themselves.

After breakfast we looked over the tourist newspaper. In it was a small advertisement for a farm which offered elephant rides. We decided that such an experience would be fun so after breakfast we arranged for a taxi. The driver took us several miles out away from Kathmandu, to a farm next to forested foothills. We stopped in front of a large, but poorly maintained house, with a couple shabby farm buildings. It looked to have been a prosperous farm which had been abandoned many years earlier. A man approached as we got out of the cab. He seemed delighted to have us want to ride his elephant. I agreed to his terms and he walked off toward the farm buildings. Soon he returned followed by a large elephant being lead by its mahout. Traditionally a mahout would have been raised from his teen years to mind one young elephant for the rest of the elephant’s 55 year lifespan. The elephant and its mahout would be a bonded team for life. There was no way to know if this mahout had such a life. However it was clear that the two, the man and this elephant, seemed to function as one.

We could see a wooden platform strapped to the elephant’s back, behind it’s shoulders. The owner placed a ten foot long ladder against the elephant’s side so we could climb up onto the platform which we found to have cushions and a low railing on the sides to prevent passengers from sliding off. The platform was just large enough to accommodate our family, two adults and three children. While standing near the left front leg of the elephant, the mahout said something quietly to it. It didn’t sound like a command. It was more like a request. The elephant responded offering his leg for the mahout to climb on. The elephant then lifted the mahout to his place on its shoulders, straddling it’s neck. Using hand gestures, as he spoke no English, the mahout advised us to stay seated on the cushions provided. The gentle swaying of the walking elephant could cause a child to lose balance and tumble off. When our children were seated, the mahout turned to face forward and said something to the elephant. We were off. It lumbered out of the farm and plodded along a narrow trail into the forested hills. As it walked through the trees, the elephant was tormented by an oversized horse fly which was attempting to bite it near it’s tail, where the skin is more pliable, and out of reach of the elephant’s trunk. Using his trunk, the elephant sucked up dust from along side the trail and blew it at the fly in an unsuccessful attempt to dissuade it. We continued along the forest path for few minutes then, without pausing, the elephant wrapped his trunk around the base of a small tree and pulled it out of the ground. It was a sapling with a five foot long trunk and a bushy crown of small leafy branches, it resembled a very large toilet brush. I wondered why an elephant would uproot a tree and then hold it as it continued walking. The mahout did not react to the elephant’s behavior, though he certainly saw it. He sat there on its shoulders swaying gently with the side to side motion of the elephant’s body.

Then I noticed the large fly had returned. The elephant must have felt it, because this part of his massive body is out of his view. Holding the tree low he stretched his trunk along his side and using the tree as a fly swatter, he swung it sideways, hitting the fly. His decisive action either smashed the fly or convinced it to go away. He had attacked the fly in such a way to avoid jeopardizing his passengers, us, who were sitting, out of his sight, and less that three feet from the fly. It then occurred to me that the elephant must have been looking for a sapling, within his reach, which had a certain configuration to act as a fly swatter. I realized that I had just witnessed an elephant planning for a future action, choosing a tool, and executing a complex plan. He even included a post action evaluation as demonstrated by his holding on to the tree for a minute or more afterwards to see if the fly would return. When it did not, he tossed the tree to the side, all this was done without slowing his steady progress up the trail.

We read about how chimps demonstrate intelligence by using a stem to catch termites. And how crows or jays can use a conveniently placed stick, to retrieve a peanut from a box. Those “intelligent” acts pale in comparison to what I observed from the back of that elephant in Nepal. Contrary to what most humans would like to think, we are not so much smarter than other animals.