I'd like to read the ending of an essay about elephants.
It's just so-- [SNIFFLES] it all goes into all the trauma
that elephants are suffering as you all know.
Thanks, Hannah.
[LAUGHTER]
The ubiquitous Hannah, always there when you need her.
A lot of you know I curated an exhibit at the Jacksonville zoo
and got to tour some exhibits at other zoos
where poets had put--
poetry in along with the traditional kinds of science,
interpretive materials at the zoos.
When I was visiting the poetry installation at Little Rock,
I had this great little experience
meeting a couple of elephants.
I'm honored to say I met two elephants at the Little Rock
Zoo.
I was touring the poetry installation
and enjoying the behind the scenes talk
of educators and keepers that had
become such a lovely part of my experience on the project.
My favorite keeper story from another zoo
was one about an orangutan that escaped his enclosure.
He was so accustomed to human behavior that when he got out,
he just stood around on the sidewalk,
putting his arm around people, and posing for photographs.
[LAUGHTER]
"Would you like to meet the elephants?"
My Little Rock host asked.
"Sure," I replied, not knowing what to expect.
We entered the night quarters, an empty, cement-floored barn
with airy compartments lined with huge steel bars,
a car-sized cylindrical red bristle
brush had been mounted vertically on one of the bars.
The brush from a street sweeper, repurposed as an elephant
back scratcher.
The keeper was hosing down the floor and steel pillars.
"Sorry," he said, "it really stinks in here today."
He just completed the weekly bleaching
so the place smelled like a swimming pool.
No elephants in sight.
Can she meet the girls?
The keeper was a tall, quiet, wiry man
with white hair, wire glasses, khaki pants, and shirt.
When he heard I was from Arizona,
he told me he was a hiker and we talked
about our favorite sites.
He let us out through the barn-sized doorway
to the dusty yard.
The two elephants were at the far end of the yard,
under a spot of shade, lazing.
He called them over.
What did he say?
Move on, or move along, something like that.
He said it quietly.
Their heads lifted and they joined us, two Asian elephants
walking over like slow, golden retrievers
at the sound of his voice.
And there we stood.
Three people, flanked by two elephants just hanging out
like a bunch of farmhands, talking in the outdoors.
I stroked their creased leather trunks and knobby brows,
one snuffed at my sneaker with its nostrils,
the two pink hollows at the tip of the trunk opening
into the warm, wet mystery of the Beast's interior.
I stood face to face with one of them.
The elephant's eyelashes long as my thumb, black, shiny, fine.
Her trunk was pink with gray freckles, the skin,
dry leather, the eyes, balmy and deep.
I was surprised by the toenails, the feet, so stump-like.
Do their toenails need care?
They get a pedicure every two weeks.
Most elephants that die in captivity,
it's from infections in the foot that spread to the body.
They have bowling pins.
One elephant has learned to bowl.
They have beer kegs to toss.
They have a huge, black ball to roll.
It's something that's used to blow through an oil pipeline
to clean it.
It's only used once, costs $8,000,
then is donated here for elephant enrichment.
The keeper tells me that they are so smart it's
hard to keep them interested.
He's always looking for a new toy or task.
He hides fruit for them to find, builds a basket up high
in the enclosure so they have to work for food.
One has a thick scar on her rear ankle.
What's her story?
They had found a packing slip in her crate when she arrived.
She had been a circus elephant, shipped
to New York City in 1951.
She must have been kept chained in her crate
when she wasn't in the circus ring.
When she got here to Little Rock,
she was afraid of everything-- the little kids,
zoo's train, the peacocks.
The other elephant had been purchased
from a logging camp in India, where she'd been employed.
The circus elephants were 61 years old.
The circus elephant was 61 years old.
The laborer, a few years younger.
Their whole lives were spent in human company
and this was the kindest chapter.
Each morning before the zoo opens,
they get to take a walk through the whole place.
A purist would want them to be free of the barn,
the dusty paddock, the steel bars,
and yet these elephants have lived interesting and difficult
lives.
Zoo people like to refer to their animals
as ambassadors from the wild.
These two are more like refugees.
Do they understand a lot of words?
About 100.
They nudge forward, but ever so gently.
They want to go inside for water.
They inch forward, never shove.
What kindness has come to them, has made them calm and patient.
I felt that somehow they knew what
I was saying with my hands, which stroked, and stroked them
while we talked.
"What do you think about animal emotions?"
I asked "You know, how people say
they have such feelings of affection and grief?"
"They know right away what you feel," said the keeper.
A man who knows these two individuals as well as I
know any of my friends.
Humans used to be that way.
But we've lost it.