Butch soon forgot the ball and chased Amy’s trunk. She spun in circles, keeping it just out of his reach. He chased her immune to the boredom of repetition. He was able to fetch the ball twenty or thirty times in a row with the same enthusiasm each time. Amy’s trunk was just as fun.
Soon Amy gave every indication that she looked forward to Butch’s visits. She stood over the ball waiting for him. But Butch was an unreliable playmate. Now and then, he wandered off the ranch in search of girlfriends and was absent for days. Amy waited near the ball. Bob, watching her, thought it was a hopeful sign.
Bob visited her stall from the gallery side. The sound of his voice, he thought, soothed her. He had sung to his cows on drives to settle them down when the night sky crackled with lightning, songs composed long ago to the cadence of a walking cow, songs like “The Night-Herding Song”:
Oh, slow up, dogies, quit moving around
You have wandered and trampled all over the ground.
Oh, graze along, dogies and feed kinda slow.
And don’t forever be on the go.
And to Amy he crooned:
“Once in love with Amy, always in love with Amy.”
He explained as he would to a new visitor about the seasons on a Colorado cattle ranch. Sometimes, he talked to her about what was on his mind—about state politics or the movie he had seen on TV the night before. Bob believed that Amy’s eyes brightened at the sound of his voice. She stood by the door and waved her trunk in the air, he was convinced, as if she wanted to reach out and touch him.
One day, out in a converted stall at the end of the horse barn, Bob was working on his tack when he heard a sound that he could have sworn was a car horn, though he had not seen a car come up the road or heard the sound of an engine. He was cleaning up saddles, halters, ropes, and chaps that hung on pegs all neat and tidy, smelling of saddle soap, polish and neat’s-foot oil. Earlier he had fed Amy and talked to her. Now, he assumed that she was playing ball with Butch.
Bob cocked his ear and pushed back his hat. He went out into the sunlight and leaned against the fence.
Amy was chasing Butch around the paddock. She let out a blast of sound that cleared up Bob’s confusion. The trumpet seemed to startle Amy most of all. She stopped and looked around, as if to say, “Who was that?”
The sound of her trumpeting made him laugh. She would survive, he guessed, and might even thrive from now on.
Bob and Jane began to see other changes in her. She was eating again, and the milk buckets were replaced now by bales of hay and oats. Bob noticed that the wrinkles in her skin were smoothing out.
T. J. Eitel, the ranch hand with the sore tooth and the flamboyant mustache, helped Bob take care of her. T. J. was an expert at breaking horses to the saddle. He was tall, thin, and soft-spoken. When he reached to unlatch Amy’s stall door, Bob held up his hand to stop him.
“She’s wild,” he told T. J. “Jackson told me that a baby elephant could kill a man with a swipe of its trunk.” He nodded at T. J. “Don’t think just because she’s cute that she’s cuddly.”
“She’s wild?”
“Yes.”
“Then how do we tame a wild elephant?” asked T. J.
“I don’t know,” said Bob. “How would you think?”
“You can’t break ’em to the saddle, like a horse. They aren’t naturally tame like cows or dogs and cats. Hell, I don’t know.”
“We better think about it, then,” said Bob. “I don’t want her to hurt anybody without meaning to.”
Jane wanted a more constant friend for Amy than Butch. He was wandering more now, and Amy was bored without him to play with. Jane asked Bob, “Can’t we find her something better? Butch is either all on or all off.”
Bob knew what she was referring to. Some animals, like thoroughbred horses, had their own “pets.” Amy needed a companion to be with her night and day. Bob had proof of what Jane was suggesting, or he thought so, anyway. Amy had scooped grain in a little pile in a corner of her stall. Seeing it there and not mistaking it for an accidental spill, Bob had wondered why. It seemed an odd behavior, though he knew next to nothing about how elephants behaved. A few weeks went by, and he forgot all about it, until one day when he was entering her stall to clean it. A small barn mouse scurried along the baseboard. Bob stood perfectly still, watching. The mouse stopped and smelled the air, and cleaned its nose with its front feet. It dropped down and nibbled at the grain. Had Amy left the food for the mouse? Had she chosen this mouse for her companion? Maybe he was only imagining it. But about the same time he first noticed the saved food, Amy had stopped crying at night.
Still, she deserved a better friend than Butch and a bigger one than a barn mouse.
Michelle was a mellow goat with a light brown coat, a white rectangular patch on her side, white dots on her forehead and chest, and floppy ears that hung down like two spare cheeks. Bob bought her from a neighbor, and when she arrived at the ranch, she walked over to Amy and said hello with her nose. Amy wrapped her trunk around Michelle’s middle, and from the first moment they met, they walked along together around the paddock like girlfriends out shopping at the mall. Michelle became Amy’s “teddy bear” and her “blankie.” She cuddled Michelle, and Michelle did not seem to mind, or even to notice that her stallmate was an elephant.
“Goats don’t think much,” Bob told Jane. “I guess that explains it. Michelle probably doesn’t think that Amy is an elephant. Amy knows she isn’t a goat. It’s a nice sight to see how Amy responds to her, though, like a long-lost friend or like the family she left behind over in Africa. But she knows it isn’t true. Michelle, on the other hand, doesn’t know what she is, and that’s why I chose her. Taking nothing away from Amy, Michelle would probably be happy with a damned kangaroo for a friend.”
From that day on Amy and Michelle played together and stood by and watched over each other. One followed the other as though they were attached by a string. Sometimes, in search of scraps of food, Michelle roamed the ranch, but at night she stayed at Amy’s side. It was not so much what they did together, Bob thought. They were together as constant friends.
Sometimes Michelle took her “friendship” a step too far, however, and at those times Amy corrected her. She had saved food for the mouse, but the mouse’s appetite was nothing compared to a goat’s. Michelle ate cans and chewed on rubber mats and assorted junk from the scrap bin. Bob always set out a big bucket of hay and oats for Amy, from which she ate through the day, whenever she was hungry. The constant presence of food was a temptation that Michelle could not resist. She viewed all food as her food, without noticing that Amy did not seem to like sharing.
With Amy standing at the far end of the paddock, Michelle wandered toward the barn and the bucket of food and started to eat, looking up from time to time to see where Amy was standing. Amy took notice and walked across the paddock to the stall. She nudged Michelle away from the bucket and, with her trunk firmly around her waist, she led her out the stall door and into the paddock.
“Michelle knew she was being asked to leave, and she scooted,” said Bob, who watched with fascination.
Amy then returned to her stall. She shut the bottom door with her trunk to keep Michelle out, and ate her dinner in peace.
An obstinate billygoat named Larry had arrived at the ranch with Michelle, as part of a two-goat deal that Bob had made. Larry had yellow slit eyes and curly horns. He must have thought that Amy was a punching bag. Right from the start he slammed her sides and shoulders, and butted her incessantly. Amy ran from him, but Larry was fast afoot, and his need to butt superseded any other goat activity. He lived to butt. He stood up on his hind legs and, with the full weight of his body, slammed his horns into Amy. He could not help himself.
“Larry was a rat,” said Bob.
A week after Larry arrived, Bob saw him butt Amy. Unlike the other times, though, now she reacted, and her attack nearly took Bob’s breath away. As quickly as he had ever seen an animal move, she hit La
rry with her trunk. He left the ground.
Bob thought, Good for you, Amy! You sure are learning how to take care of business!
A few days later Bob was walking by Amy’s stall when he heard the grunts of a goat in agony. He looked in and saw that Amy had pinned Larry up against the wall and was pushing him with her head.
“Ol’ Larry was going, ‘Unnh, unnh, unnh.’ He knew he was about to die. I thought, Oh, nuts! I did not want Amy learning bad habits. I said, ‘No, no, Amy,’ and she backed off. Larry ran out. I never let him near her again. To be honest, after that he was a goner, anyway, as far as the ranch was concerned. He was bad news.”
Tentatively at first, Amy began to explore her new world. She twisted bolts and unscrewed screws, turned handles and unfastened latches. She might have dismantled her stall, leaving it in a state of collapse, if Bob had not tightened down every nut and bolt with a wrench. She wandered, sniffed, and touched out of an enormous natural curiosity, seemingly missing nothing. She explored with her trunk up in the ceiling of her stall. She worked the latches on the doors, broke off doorknobs, and pulled levers. She tested water taps. She “tasted” soaps and cleaners in the tack room, and she “played” with the saddles and bridles. She pulled the windshield wipers off the trucks and tractors and reached into the open windows and turned the steering wheels.
Her favorite distraction by far, though, was a garden hose, which she had learned to turn on at the tap. She held the nozzle and squirted herself all over, and sprayed Michelle and anyone who happened to come within reach. Bob ran through the spray and turned off the water, and Amy stood patiently holding the end of the hose, clearly waiting for him to leave.
Bob gave his young elephant the freedom to roam the whole ranch. It was time for her world to expand, he believed. He didn’t mind where she went. (There was nowhere to go, anyway, but into the wide open spaces.) He kept the gate to her paddock unlocked. He had no control over her. He predicted correctly that she would always return eventually to her feeding bucket.
She looked bizarrely out of place even to the cowhands who saw her every day. Some of the newer ranch hands rubbed their eyes in disbelief, seeing her for the first time. After a few days, her presence made the hands feel different and, even a bit special. She was their elephant too.
Amy was content. Water was abundant, the sky was filled with clouds, and her food bin was always full. She was wild and free. Bob did not discipline her Indeed, he asked nothing of her but that she find her way in her new world. He allowed her the freedom to grow up and gain confidence at her own pace.
One morning Amy and Michelle wandered over from the paddock to the cutting pen, where Bob was working the colts. Suddenly Amy’s trunk went up, and she trumpeted loudly. Bob looked over at her, surprised. He thought, Oh, damn, here she comes!
She charged the colts in the pen as though they were the zebras back in Zimbabwe. The colts “just went bonkers when they saw her coming. I mean, one jumped plumb over the fence, it wanted out of there so bad. I didn’t know what Amy was going to do. Hell, I didn’t know what the horses would do either. Amy knew that she was scaring them, I swear. She was having a ball. She figured that out real quick. It was as if she was thinking, Hey, these guys are scared to death of me. I’m going to have some fun with it. She ran after them deliberately and trumpeted to frighten them.”
Soon after, realizing that Amy was going to have to get along with the colts sooner or later, Bob put colts in the paddock next to her. When the colts ran around the enclosure, Amy ran around in her paddock trumpeting loudly. “She got so excited she did figure eights,” said Bob, who next tied the colts to Amy’s paddock fence.
At first the young horses bunched up at the sight of Amy. She walked over to them and reached her trunk through the fence. She touched their noses. She tugged at their ropes. Days later she entered their paddock and rubbed up against them. Now they didn’t seem to mind. They treated her with all the indifference they would have shown just another colt.
Bob told Jane, “I guess she’s starting to think of herself as a horse with a trunk. Or maybe the colts are starting to think that they are elephants without a trunk. It’s hard to know. It is becoming a peaceful kingdom out there, anyway, with the lions laying down with the lambs.”
Jane told him, “It seems like the only one she isn’t used to, Bob, is you.”
He knew that. He had asked himself how he might best approach her. He did not want to frighten her. A misstep or a premature action, he knew, might take away her self-confidence. He had no answers. But Jane was right. It was time to make Amy as much a part of the human ranch as she was of the animal.
The more he considered the problem, he came to see that an old football injury might hold the key. A couple of years before, a surgeon had removed bone chips from his knee, which sometimes locked up, “just snapped shut,” and forced him to walk on crutches or ride on horseback when he would normally walk. He asked himself, Why not approach Amy on horseback? Would that fool a smart young elephant like her? He decided to give it a try.
Astride Big Bob, he rode up to Amy in her paddock. He steadied the horse and leaned over in the saddle. He took Amy’s trunk in his hand and soothed her with the sound of his voice. So slowly that he hardly appeared to be moving, he swung his leg over the stallion’s back and lowered one leg to the ground. He was watching Amy, ready at an instant’s notice to climb back on the horse. He kept his hand out to her. He came down out of the saddle with his other foot. Now he was standing slightly apart from Big Bob. He walked across the paddock with his back turned to Amy. He pushed his hat up on his head. Deciding, Now or never, he stopped, figuring that she would either run away or charge him. He made a quarter turn to face her.
She nearly bumped into him.
Bob laughed out loud. She accepted him on his own two feet. Now they could start to be best friends.
Mud gave Bob the idea. Amy had rolled in it after rain showers and where the water from the hose pooled in the dirt. He believed that she would roll in a teacup of mud if she fit. One day he decided to build a proper, African-type wallow big enough for them to enjoy together.
He flooded a natural depression in the land, about fifty feet around and three feet deep, behind the horse barn. He brought Amy out and stood with her at the water’s edge. At first she splashed with her trunk and stood on the bank. Then suddenly she charged across the pond, trumpeting. She blew water at Butch, and splashed Michelle. She sprayed Bob, then lay down and rolled over in the wallow.
T. J. and the hands came to watch. They took off their boots, rolled up their pants, and waded in, up to their calves. They splashed, fell over backward in the water, and flopped around in the mud. They threw water at Amy, and she blew water at them. Then Bob was in, up to his knees, laughing. He said to his hands, “Hell, boys, you’re just like a bunch of kids.”
The Toys “” Us sales assistants thought Bob was a doting grandfather. Money seemed to mean nothing to him. He liked big toys—oversize harmonicas and inflatable swimming pools, plastic baseball bats, and huge rubber balls. The staff recommended other items—educational toys, board games, and the latest promotional tie-ins from popular kids’ movies. But all the cowboy wanted were big toys.
“Why is that?” one of them finally thought to ask him.
“For my elephant,” he replied without thinking, as he tested the strength of a plastic pool for Amy’s paddock.
“Yes, sir,” the attendant had replied.
No one in the store really believed him. The only elephant in the area, almost everyone knew, was the one at the Colorado Springs Zoo. So they humored him and started to recommend toys that an elephant might even enjoy, rolling their eyes at each suggestion.
Over time Amy’s paddock filled up with toys, like a spoiled child’s playground. At Christmas, after opening their presents around the tree at home, Bob and Jane wandered down to Amy’s stall with presents in their arms. They had wrapped her gifts individually and tied them with colored r
ibbons. Bob laid them down on the straw in her stall. The gifts excited her interest; she tugged at the ribbons with the fingers of her trunk while Bob hummed Christmas carols to set the mood.
On Halloween Bob turned the tables on her. He dressed up in a bluish gray and very baggy elephant suit, with an elephant’s trunk that drooped down off his face, and elephant’s ears that flopped to his shoulders. Amy sniffed at him and then followed Michelle into the paddock. Bob could hardly remember a time when Halloween had been this much fun.
_____
She was his little girl—“little” even as her growth was beginning to worry about everyone else on the ranch. Jane was the first to raise the issue. It wasn’t that Amy was big and powerful, it was that Bob had no control over her.
She would not leave the barn area, even when Bob encouraged her to accompany him when he rode. She went back into her stall when she was hungry, not when Bob wanted her to. Behind Bob’s back the ranch hands started to call her “the Bulldozer.” And, like Jane, they worried about her wildness, her size, and Bob’s lack of control.
Another issue that upset Jane was that Bob was spending all his spare time with Amy. Jane was used to him working long hours at the ranch with the cows and the horses. But he wasn’t giving his time to them anymore: It was all going to Amy alone.
“You know how, when a girl is married to a golfer,” she asked Bob one night, “they’re called ‘golf widows’? I’m becoming an ‘elephant widow.’ It’s time for you to try to figure out where you’re going with Amy.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Amy has to be included in all our lives,” she told him. “For a start she has to learn to live among us, and that means she has to learn discipline. One reason you spend so much time with her is that you feel responsible for her. You have to spend the time because you have no control over her You have to watch her or otherwise there’s no telling what might happen.”
The Cowboy and his Elephant Page 8