“Elephant hide is thick as bark on an ancient tree, but a claw-stick can pierce it like a leaf. Once Stella saw a trainer hit a bull elephant with a claw-stick. A bull is like a silverback, noble, contained, calm like a cobra is calm. When the claw-stick caught in the bull’s flesh, he tossed the trainer into the air with his tusk. The man flew, Stella said, like an ugly bird. She never saw the bull again.”