pachydermaphilic

on the top shelf of the cupboards next to my bed, in a box somewhere, is an elephant.

a green, once-fluffy one, given to me by a lady named mary.

when i was 6 months old.

it has been years since he lay on my bed, but i know that the end of his trunk is still scratchy with plastic strings sticking out, and that he has a blue and white shaky-ball inside him, which can you see through his now transparent, worn-through skin.

i once broke his black, plastic eye off when i threw him down on the floor in a no-reason kid rage, and was inconsolable.

like i was, apparently, when i left him in a show house that was locked overnight, and my mother had to call the estate agent so that we could get him out.

or when we, again apparently, searched the house upside down, in every drawer, cupboard and bedroom, only to find him safely sealed inside a orange tupperware lettuce-spinner in the kitchen.

hours later.

but eventually, i became less dependent on his company, and slowly his faded green body became permanently protected by his blue and white trimmed mainstay cane-bottle t-shirt.

his broken eye glued black, and the dried sticky, gluey ooze still visible, a guilty reminder of uncalled-for abuse.

and now, he's somewhere in the top of the cupboard, but i'm not sure exactly where.

in fact, i'm actually too scared to look for him now, because there's a chance he might not be there, even though my mother insists he is "somewhere in my room".

which is similar to the way i think many people feel about elephants, or wild animals in general.

that they're somewhere out there, outside the confines of cities, in closed-up fenced-off reserves, presumably happy in their concealed safety.

but after reading the elephant whisperer, i started to think they might not be.

misleadingly titled, the book is not a metaphysical account of psychic inter-species communication, but more a book about something that all humans used to know, but don't anymore.

for thousands of years, humans and these handful-of-tonne-weight, grey, trunked pachyderms lived together in the same space.

presumably in respect for each other's existence, but i think in more of a one-sided way.

people that lived around them knew that they would get charged, and beaten down, if they threatened the safety of an elephant, and learnt how not to do that.

now, you have to do a series of government approved nature guide qualifications to even be able to get near to one on foot, without the relative safety assurance of a passenger land rover.

and maybe this is a natural process, the path of human and planetary evolution.

the next logical process in a world with a continuous supply of regularly tweaked, upgraded and militarily improved ammunition.

but sometimes, even though i try to be realistic, it makes me sad.

sad that so many south africans, without the means or resources to have access to game parks, have never even seen an elephant, never mind able to understand its behaviour, or ecological contribution.

and maybe i don't know everything about them either.

but i do know that scientists have studied their ability to communicate through their feet, that their destructive behaviour actually aids the distribution of seeds, and that confined within a demarcated space, they are just huge animals wanting to break out.

to travel the migration paths that they instinctively want to, but can't, unless they're hardcore enough to sustain 8,000 volts when forcing their way through electric fencing like the rogue elephants in the elephant whisperer, or somehow develop the ability to withstand gun fire.

so maybe, although content enough within the space between strategically placed electric wires, elephants in south africa, and in many other countries, will always be confined.

which makes me think of my green, fluffy-no-longer, toy elephant, ellie.

in his box.

and the fact that i really should go find him.