What the Bottom of an Elephant's Foot Feels Like
What the Bottom of an Elephant’s Foot Feels Like
Like the bottom of an unfired pot---that’s what the bottom of an elephant’s foot feels like: rough, firm, dusty in places, thick flesh cracked in places like desiccated clay. It’s about the size of a bathroom trash can but four of them can support between ten thousand pounds, and carry it all around in almost total silence.
I know this because when my twenty-year old daughter casually mentioned that she had always wanted to touch the bottom of one, something in me came alive. Wouldn’t such an opportunity make the perfect 21st birthday present? And don’t I want to touch one myself? Yes, and yes.
I went to the National Zoo, pled my case, and was told that if I really wanted to touch an elephant foot my best bet was to fly to Thailand where there were lots of people with casual attitudes about their elephants being touched, unlike here in the United States. They reminded me that elephants are large and can kill people. I knew that—it was why I wanted to run my hand down an elephant toe.
I kept calling, asking for advice about my situation: perhaps there was somewhere else I could turn? The elephant curators kept talking back, curious themselves about someone who wanted to touch elephant feet. Their curiosity about us led to a final, deeply generous concession: we could come and touch a foot if we promised to obey all directions. Marie would be our guide.
The internet made it possible for us to learn that Marie had started out in primates, a converted baboon person who had spent most of the last quarter of a century with elephants. We asked about the relationship between the humans and their charges. The elephant house staff were all Animal People—devoted to their charges, happy to end their days smelling of elephant and thinking about blood samples for zoological studies. They considered themselves part of the elephants’ social world.
Marie introduced us to Shanthi and Shatnthi’s mother, Ambika. Shanti came when called and lifted her foot when asked to, raising it and dropping it lightly on a bar at about the height of my chest. She balanced there calmly on three feet as we touched her. She did not treat us as if we were strange or unreasonable. Uninteresting, perhaps. Nothing to get cranky about, though.
Thanked and told that was enough, she plucked the foot smoothly away and settled it on the ground. Shanthi was offered a few carrots, each no bigger than a little finger, and she plucked them up deftly. Marie asked her to turn and she swiveled smoothly, nine-thousand pounds revolving as gently as if it were balanced on a divet. Her ropy-fuzzed skin felt like heavy luggage but when I pressed my hand against her flank I felt gurglings from her stomach and, if I moved it a bit to the left, a thump from a twenty-five pound heart. Shanthi swept her trunk down to flick another one-inch carrot into the pincer-like end of her trunk.
She didn’t have to do any of this, of course. If the elephants don’t feel like participating in human games, there is no forcing here. Yet they typically accommodate us, decoding our movements and spoken language without demanding the favor in return. We have yet to plumb their minds or speak to them in Elephant, but they keep listening to us—hopeful optimists, perhaps. Lots of animals do the same. Dogs can tell a human companion that an epileptic seizure is on the way, evidence that animals have access to much more of us than our minds. Cats were manipulating us long before we tried to get them to eat kibble instead of canned tuna. My family once had a hamster that came when called. A mere meatball living at the bottommost point of the food chain, still she flung herself against the side of the cage facing us and chirped if she heard my footsteps approaching. She disliked hamster balls, a human invention designed quite specifically for her delight.
In the next enclosure Shanthi’s 63-year old mother Ambika tossed dust on her back and sides before strolling over to a hose that was propped up to direct a stream of spraying water into her enclosure. She swept her trunk through the mist, capturing enough for a quick head-rinse. When elephants age their bodies loosen and get baggier. Ambika’s thighs reminded me of my own mother’s legs when she reached Ambika’s age. Mine are moving in that direction as well.
Though I’ve never been able to imagine a divinity making Adam out of dirt and breathing life into his human form, an elephant, particularly an older elephant, seems to have just been breathed to life from the ground where she sprang. Lumpy. Thick. Slow. Gracious. A creature just a millisecond beyond the stone age, as we ourselves are if geological time is the yardstick. Yet in many essential ways they are as foreign to us as dragons. It made me feel a little lonely, actually, standing this close to them as they waited patiently while we touched their toes and sides and feet bottoms.
What’s an elephant’s favorite toy? my daughter asked just before we left. Marie answered in the matter-of-fact tone of an expert, which she was. She sounded a little resigned. That would be other elephants, she said. That’s what an elephant loves.
Like the bottom of an unfired pot---that’s what the bottom of an elephant’s foot feels like: rough, firm, dusty in places, thick flesh cracked in places like desiccated clay. It’s about the size of a bathroom trash can but four of them can support between ten thousand pounds, and carry it all around in almost total silence.
I know this because when my twenty-year old daughter casually mentioned that she had always wanted to touch the bottom of one, something in me came alive. Wouldn’t such an opportunity make the perfect 21st birthday present? And don’t I want to touch one myself? Yes, and yes.
I went to the National Zoo, pled my case, and was told that if I really wanted to touch an elephant foot my best bet was to fly to Thailand where there were lots of people with casual attitudes about their elephants being touched, unlike here in the United States. They reminded me that elephants are large and can kill people. I knew that—it was why I wanted to run my hand down an elephant toe.
I kept calling, asking for advice about my situation: perhaps there was somewhere else I could turn? The elephant curators kept talking back, curious themselves about someone who wanted to touch elephant feet. Their curiosity about us led to a final, deeply generous concession: we could come and touch a foot if we promised to obey all directions. Marie would be our guide.
The internet made it possible for us to learn that Marie had started out in primates, a converted baboon person who had spent most of the last quarter of a century with elephants. We asked about the relationship between the humans and their charges. The elephant house staff were all Animal People—devoted to their charges, happy to end their days smelling of elephant and thinking about blood samples for zoological studies. They considered themselves part of the elephants’ social world.
Marie introduced us to Shanthi and Shatnthi’s mother, Ambika. Shanti came when called and lifted her foot when asked to, raising it and dropping it lightly on a bar at about the height of my chest. She balanced there calmly on three feet as we touched her. She did not treat us as if we were strange or unreasonable. Uninteresting, perhaps. Nothing to get cranky about, though.
Thanked and told that was enough, she plucked the foot smoothly away and settled it on the ground. Shanthi was offered a few carrots, each no bigger than a little finger, and she plucked them up deftly. Marie asked her to turn and she swiveled smoothly, nine-thousand pounds revolving as gently as if it were balanced on a divet. Her ropy-fuzzed skin felt like heavy luggage but when I pressed my hand against her flank I felt gurglings from her stomach and, if I moved it a bit to the left, a thump from a twenty-five pound heart. Shanthi swept her trunk down to flick another one-inch carrot into the pincer-like end of her trunk.
She didn’t have to do any of this, of course. If the elephants don’t feel like participating in human games, there is no forcing here. Yet they typically accommodate us, decoding our movements and spoken language without demanding the favor in return. We have yet to plumb their minds or speak to them in Elephant, but they keep listening to us—hopeful optimists, perhaps. Lots of animals do the same. Dogs can tell a human companion that an epileptic seizure is on the way, evidence that animals have access to much more of us than our minds. Cats were manipulating us long before we tried to get them to eat kibble instead of canned tuna. My family once had a hamster that came when called. A mere meatball living at the bottommost point of the food chain, still she flung herself against the side of the cage facing us and chirped if she heard my footsteps approaching. She disliked hamster balls, a human invention designed quite specifically for her delight.
In the next enclosure Shanthi’s 63-year old mother Ambika tossed dust on her back and sides before strolling over to a hose that was propped up to direct a stream of spraying water into her enclosure. She swept her trunk through the mist, capturing enough for a quick head-rinse. When elephants age their bodies loosen and get baggier. Ambika’s thighs reminded me of my own mother’s legs when she reached Ambika’s age. Mine are moving in that direction as well.
Though I’ve never been able to imagine a divinity making Adam out of dirt and breathing life into his human form, an elephant, particularly an older elephant, seems to have just been breathed to life from the ground where she sprang. Lumpy. Thick. Slow. Gracious. A creature just a millisecond beyond the stone age, as we ourselves are if geological time is the yardstick. Yet in many essential ways they are as foreign to us as dragons. It made me feel a little lonely, actually, standing this close to them as they waited patiently while we touched their toes and sides and feet bottoms.
What’s an elephant’s favorite toy? my daughter asked just before we left. Marie answered in the matter-of-fact tone of an expert, which she was. She sounded a little resigned. That would be other elephants, she said. That’s what an elephant loves.
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