Elephants can fly

I saw a small baby elephant fly once. Not Dumbo, and I wasn’t watching the Disney animated movie of the same name with Dumbo’s small cartoon character friend, Timonthy Q Mouse. This is not a tall tale nor is it a tall tail from Tim the mouse. It happened in real time, a real-live incident. There one minute gone the next. Quicker than you can say D-U-M-B-O. It was catastrophic. It was also traumatic, as the baby elephant, when last seen had my small 7-year-old son on its back.

Never trust a wild animal, they say. You never know what they will do next, they say. They aren’t house trained, and some never will be. Such as Lions, Tigers and Bears. And elephants. A lion tamer told me once, if a lion attacks you, throw shit in its face.

I said incredulously. “Where am I going to find shit to throw in its face?”

The lion tamer replied nonchalantly. “Just reach behind you, it will be there, when the time comes!”

This baby elephant had normal ears, when I say normal, I mean in proportion to its small size - normal. Up close; if you ever get a chance to pet a baby elephant, as these smaller cute looking versions, unlike their giant taller parents, stand at an adult human being’s eye level, whereas a full-sized elephant towers menacingly above your head. So, petting the top of the adult elephants’ head is impossible. With the small baby version, I was immediately stuck by its beady eye. You can feel the intelligence, carefully weighing you up, before that huge proboscis catches up with the watching beady eye, and the trunk with a mind of own, hoovers around with malice and intent. It’s more than likely looking for treats; bananas. No doubt.

Blame it on Spielberg, but since the War of Worlds movie scene in the basement. Where the human beings are hiding, trembling in the dark, as the alien machine with its long lookalike proboscis is searching for their presence, as they hide behind a mirror avoiding the horror of being carried away as a source of food; for me the similar looking elephant’s trunk has taken on new meaning. An ominous meaning.

So, I petted the baby elephant’s huge head that day with respect, encouraging my seven-year-old boy to do the same. He didn’t need any encouragement, he had always been a touchy feely type of child, into any mischief. With four older mischievous siblings, with at least a ten-year age gap, he was treated more like a toy, instead of a small homo sapien. Nonetheless, he grew up with plenty of older brothers or sisters to play around, but often with disastrous consequences. His older siblings jokingly nicknamed him Damian from the Omen movie, because of scar on his scalp in the shape of a figure eight, a left behind reminder that he had once suffered with ringworm infected from some stray cats he wasn’t supposed to be playing with.

I sometimes marvel how he lived through it all.

Nevertheless, that day of the incident with the baby elephant there were no antagonists such as older siblings around to influence what was about to unfold. Another episode of near escapes, and life-threatening events. After all, perhaps he was another Damian by another name! Looking on, it sometimes felt like a living hell.

The resort hotel in Thailand had organized for the baby elephant to visit for the children to ride on its back around the small, safe and secluded hotel turnaround and drop off area. The baby elephant was accompanied by a small Thai man, the handler. He would carefully place each child on the back of the small elephant, place their legs for purchase around its neck, and tell them to place their hands on the elephant’s head. The handler would then carefully parade the elephant and child around the hotel drop-off area in small circles. The waiting parents tipped the handler, and paid for bananas from another handler, who held a basket of bananas ready to help and encourage the children to feed the baby elephant with its wandering proboscis.

At this point in the story, it is necessary to give a mention to the neighbouring Dinosaur Park, which had been constructed by the same company that had created the artificial rock pools, tropical waterfalls, and enchanting treelined pathways in the resort. These artificial structures combined with the natural fauna created an exotic ambience of living in the wilds of a jungle but with all the modern conveniences. The Dinosaur Park was also designed and constructed with a Jurassic Park like perception, as well as a crazy golf course, and small take away restaurant that served Dino burgers, Bronto creamy milk shakes, and Pterodactyl fries. The continuous lights and sound show from the exploding miniature volcanoes, and continuous sound loop from the Jurassic age created an audience of interested passerby tourists. The loud roar and flashing lights of T-rex when you putt the golf ball successfully into his open jaws on the last hole always created a gasp from the onlookers.

To this day I’m not sure what spooked the baby elephant, it might have the sudden roar of T-rex from the Dino Park, which triggered a primordial memory from the baby elephant’s elephantine ancestry of Mammoths or the original Primelephas. One will never know. Every living creature on earth during the Jurassic age was on the T-rex food chain.

But for whatever reason the baby elephant with my seven-year-old son on its back disappeared around the corner of the neighbouring Dino park which headed directly into the busy main road.

I fled in the same direction as the disappearing pair, towards the main busy road. I hadn’t noticed that the handler had also followed the fleeing pair at the same time.

Now I know in that part of the world it is commonplace to see elephants of various shapes and sizes, slowly lopping along the main thoroughfare, in an orderly manner with the various other means of transport, sleepwalking in the hot and dusty streets of India Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Nonetheless, the sight of charging small elephant, completely out of control running down the main road, with my seven-year-old clinging on with his precious life on a thread, on top of the elephant’s back still brings back an icy shudder and moment in freezing hell.

Suddenly the small elephant took off; it flew, with all its four legs dangling like pillars, one or two bent at the knees, but it took off into the air. The elephant had jumped to avoid the oncoming car. All at once, three complementary events occurred. Firstly, the small elephant was now in full flight, with the Thai handler still by the elephant’s side, both airborne. Now I noticed he had a small stick in his hand to control the one- or two-ton beast. The stick had been completely ineffective as he reached out with his other hand and grabbed my son by the arm and pulled him off the back of the flying elephant, just as the car swerved to avoid the imminent landing of flying jumbo. Resulting in the oncoming car swerving directly into the Dino park and narrowly missing the first hole.

The baby elephant continued running at full speed down the hill, as cars swerved left and right to avoid a head-on collision. For some it could have been a normal everyday occurrence, drive carefully and watch out for those runaway baby elephants carrying a small child on its back, spooked by the roar of a dinosaur. It certainly wasn’t reported in the local press as a newsworthy item, so we have to assume for the locals, it was a normal everyday event.

What spooked the baby elephant, we will never know. I just hope my suspicions of T-rex roaring from the Dino Park are true, and it wasn’t instead Damian whispering provoking words in the ear of the elephant.