The Memory of an Elephant

by Alex Lasker

Elephant calves will not sleep without an adult figure nearby—even human, if that’s all there is—and they’ll look up constantly to make sure someone is with them. The longing in a young elephant’s eyes is haunting, and the attachment between the two species quickly becomes profound, sometimes even more so for the humans.

They are the rulers of this earth, there are too many of them, and the rest of us are at their mercy.

The irony was stunning: here Jean was, raising orphaned animals whose mothers had been killed by hunters, yet her husband was one of the most sought-after hunters in Africa.

The earth we walk upon has no memory of us; its only concern is the constancy of day into night, season after season, and the memory of any one of us is soon gone from the earth forever.

the Filipino Catholic church was, and is, the biggest buyer of illicit ivory carvings in the world. And in the case of the worst offender, the Chinese, the government assures their people that no elephants are killed when cutting off their tusks. The tusks simply grow back once they’ve been “harvested.”

In almost every life there is a moment where a choice is made that changes everything from that point on, thought Amanda many years later. The road not taken, the courage to speak up or remain silent in the face of a bully, the career chosen or abandoned, the lover married or spurned—the decision and its effects are only apparent with time. And there is no way to go back and change it. For better or worse, a life’s course is set from that moment on.

Like many sociopaths, Gichinga was extremely adept at mimicking real emotions when he needed to, and now he employed that gift in the most important performance of his life.

When things are going well, embrace the days, because they never last for long. A dark wind is always waiting over the horizon, and it can come racing down the plains at any moment.

The procession of elephants was duly recorded and sent out to the world as proof of the emotional depth and intelligence of the species. Thanks to Morgan Freeman’s sonorous narration, there was not a single doubter (with the exception of the Chinese and the Far East Asians) of the elephant’s place in the sentient wild kingdom, right next to dolphins and whales.

Whether it is just darkness that I will find, or if it is filled with friends and light, or if it is something I have never considered, I will go to the place all of life before me has gone. We elephants know that. I will either watch over this life from somewhere in the sky, or I will melt into the earth and know nothing but dreamless sleep. No matter what it is, I am ready.