Raoul has many talents. He can make a fetching hostess gift out of eight rocks and Chapstick. He can find an attractive jacket at Burlington Coat Factory. And he can communicate with animals. Anybody who's seen him watch
The Dog Whisperer knows that. He sits eight inches away from the TV, and whenever Cesar Millan does anything -- whether it's reprimanding the animal, lecturing it, or depositing it into a giant Pringles can -- Raoul agrees effusively, saying, "Yes, that's
exactly what little Nippy needs!"
So naturally when we talked of a weekend in Thailand, his number-one requirement was that we see elephants. They were his brothers, he said. They were related. I didn't inquire whether this was why he had three-inch-long eyelashes and extraordinarily thick skin. Eight minutes after landing in Chiang Mai we were flagging down a bus in search of his big gray family.
"Do you go to any elephant camps?" I asked the smiling driver.
Clueless. No English whatsoever. Even repeating the words "elephant camp" got no glimmer of recognition.
Finally a schoolgirl, the bus' lone rider, intervened. She said something in Thai to the driver, and the driver immediately brightened. "Yes!" she barked, suddenly linguistic. "Fifteen dollars!"
We agreed. Ten seconds later we were burning rubber in the opposite direction and the little girl was waving goodbye to us from the sidewalk. For close to an hour we puttered along winding mountain roads before pulling over in a cloud of dust.
MAESA ELEPHANT CAMP," a sign said.
The place looked a little scruffy, so I grabbed a brochure to make sure we were doing the right thing. It had all the politically-correct words: they made efforts to ensure the animals stayed "mentally and physically vigorous." "[O]nly the best and most sanitary nutrition and treatment are provided to all elephant [sic]," it said. Their philosophy was to "create a natural and healthy environment for the elephants."
We paid our admission and wandered in. Needless to say, I was a bit shocked to discover that the "best treatment" included hitting the elephants on the head while they ferried tourists around on $20 rides. I started to suspect that this environment was neither natural nor healthy during a show where elephants kicked footballs, played harmonicas, and painted pictures of flowers.
Still, I tried to suppress my irritation and focus on my fledgling feelings of excitement. Raoul, on the other hand, could hardly be contained. He touched the elephants, petted them, talked to them. He greeted them like long-lost relatives, staring in their bloodshot eyes like he could read their minds.
"Is he happy here?" I asked, like grandma asking a psychic how grandpappy was faring in heaven.
"Yes," he said. "They get three meals a day. It's peaceful. They loved living in the jungle but it doesn't get more stressful than that."
I was about to say they've obviously never had Time Warner Cable but I bit my lip. I spotted a table where a woman was selling elephant food -- bananas and sugarcane -- so I went for it. Whatever I thought about this place, it was certainly no crime to feed an elephant. I tore a banana off the bunch and, realizing there was probably a reason these guys were chained down, tentatively waved it toward one of the smaller ones.
The elephant tried to reach for it but couldn't. It straightened its trunk, it tugged on its chain, it grunted its frustration, but it still couldn't reach.
"Move in closer," Raoul commanded. "He's chained down and he's straining."
I cautiously slid an inch closer. The elephant pulled on its chain and ramped up the grunting but the banana was still too far away.
"Get closer!" Raoul snapped. "GET CLOSER!"
I leaned forward another few inches but it didn't help. The animal stretched and struggled against its chain but still couldn't get the treat. It screamed and roared and bellowed in distress.
"OMHIGOD!" Raoul yelled. "GET CLOSER!" YOU'RE TORTURING HIM! YOU'RE TORTURING HIM!"
Raoul was totally freaking out at this point, seconds away from lifting me up and feeing me to the elephant. Yes, I thought, elephants are chained to the ground and whacked with sticks here, yet I'm the villain. I'm the guy who needs to be yelled at.
Against my better judgment I moved a couple inches closer to the elephant and for the next few seconds life slid into slow motion. The elephant, you see, had been faking it. It could have reached the banana: it just didn't want to. It wanted the dozen bananas and five sticks of sugarcane tied together with raffia that I was holding behind my back. And when I moved those last inches forward, it decided that it could finally reach them.
All of a sudden the elephant lurched a good two feet forward. The massive gray muscle that was its trunk walloped me on the side and reached around me, and with its trunk acting like iron fingers it latched onto my little bundle of food.
And it yanked. It yanked exactly as hard as you'd think a wild, forty-ton animal would yank. For a millisecond I felt the searing pain of overstretched raffia about to slice my fingers off like four little Vienna sausages, whereupon I totally abandoned my grip and hoped the day would end with no permanent disfigurement. The elephant ferried the entire bundle to his mouth and dumped it in. He chomped away happily at the dozen bananas, five sticks of sugarcane, and the raffia that tied them together.
I glanced at my fingers and the bright red welt that was surfacing. I realized that in slightly altered circumstances, this is where my fingers would end.
I shot Raoul a look that was just short of total shock. He shrugged. "Don't get too close," he said.
