Marianta (Part One)
by Brett E. Wilson
Elephants are very intelligent, even if they do not look so. Not only have scientific studies shown this, but an elephant’s high intelligence is demonstrated through its behavior, reliable memory, and keen learning habits. Elephants are also known to have the ability to love their herds, places, and even people who care for them.
Elephants remember so much that their entire lives could dance before their jewel-like eyes, play inside their large rose-petal shaped ears, and trumpet through their hearts and out of their long, echoing trunks. Even this, however, they would likely expect to happen without another thought. By the time an elephant is fully grown, it has had these memory journeys innumerable times. However, there was one elephant who actually felt time fly. This elephant mother still remembers the monarch butterfly who helped her long ago at a zoo in Sydney, Australia.
It began for She Elephant when she lived in Asia, between the countries of India and Thailand. She was young, orphaned, and remembered very little of how she had lost her parents. She had a faint memory of cold nighttime beneath a cliff towards the end of a plain with thunder-like noises followed by a morning of muddy water. This, she figured, must have had something to do with her disappearing parents, but she had not intended to share this thought with anyone. It was, in fact, one of her few less distinct memories.
The Elephant made her home in the tall bamboo and sugarcane clearing of a rainforest, which smelled fresh and fruity. The rainwater and sunlight making its way into this glade kept it clean, and the best temperature for nearly any tropical animal to live in (despite questionable safety). As a younger elephant making her home in this rainforest, she would often find herself rather bored. This was not because the rainforest was not a sustainable, temperate, and attractive environment, but because she did not know exactly how to act like an elephant. She needed one of her own kind with whom to interact and learn (as well as to possibly love), “...unless I am the only one of my own kind.”
Although she did not have a true family, she was able to make friends with different local animals of tropical Asia: pandas, reptiles, birds, leopards, and small monkeys. They each would teach She Elephant a few things about themselves and their families while they would learn more of an elephant’s needs and instinctive behaviors from her. She had even managed once to save two pipits and a thrush together from an angered cobra.
Of course, the Elephant did not share many of the same features or mechanisms as her friends of the wild nature in which she lived, and she had to be especially resourceful. Whenever she would meet other animals, they considered her very pretty, yet plump and very tall. She Elephant was reasonably quiet except for occasional trumpeting. As with most elephants, many of her sounds were too low for most of the other beasts to hear.
One summer, when the Elephant had grown close to nine years of age (an adolescent Asian elephant), she was seen and taken by some humans from Australia on a safari. The Elephant was unsure of this unusual meeting with these beings of strange shape and color. She had heard of humans before, but never had interacted with any. Could she trust these people, and were they perhaps responsible for her disappearing parents?
They had pleasant voices, and the elephant could tell by the skin and vocal textures which of them were female like herself. She shortly learned, with gratitude, that some of her animal friends would be joining her on the sea voyage, yet she worried over where they were going and what to do. The noise of ocean waves against the sides of the boat seemed, to her, likely to attract lightning. “Can they be taking us where my parents have gone?” the elephant moaned softly to herself.
“I wouldn’t think so, since no one has seen or heard of elephants in this zoo lately”, a strange voice answered from elsewhere, in a fluttering way. “Hmm? I wonder who that is. Not an elephant.” The voice was still echoing in her deep, lilac-colored ears. “And I didn’t know we were being shipped away to a zoo. Isn’t that a place where animals go for a vacation from which they never come back?" she wondered, trying not to despair.
The next week, the elephant awoke to find herself in a cold indoor cage, soon discovering an outdoor extension for her with a water feature, trees, and dry sand. It rather reminded her of home. “But what will I do when it gets too cold to sleep out here, and that uncomfortable tunnel is the only other place?” she asked herself. Conveniently, a zookeeper’s voice let her know that hay was still coming. “What a relief,” she thought as she noticed the tent across the visitors’ walkway.
On the other side of the tent, she saw a giraffe eating from one of the thinner trees. A sudden flicker of color and lines caught Girl Elephant’s eye. “Oh, what or who is…?” Before she could finish exclaiming, the brightly-colored little design flew to Girl Elephant’s habitat and bowed its wings open. “Hello, I would like to be your friend and to show you something,” the orange and black insect seemed to say.
“Now I see you are a monarch butterfly. I haven’t actually seen one in person before, but I’ve learned a little about your kind and have seen a few butterflies of different colors near my home. You seem like magical creatures to me,” the elephant said. “Well, I haven’t any magic, but we are pollinators, so we help to spread and grow things.”
“You have amazing wings, but how can you help me?” She, the elephant, questioned bashfully. “Not meaning to be rude, but I am so much bigger, and I didn’t know that insects wanted any dealings with the large animals.”
The butterfly explained that elephants fascinated her and that she knew how gentle and wise they were, thus she was willing to know her closely. “My mother knew a kind male elephant in this zoo while I was a caterpillar. He was from India.”
“Oh, I don’t think he would have been my father, then,” the elephant said with faint disappointment. “That still is a nice thing. Is he living now?”
“I couldn’t tell you for certain, since he was sent to a smaller zoo a little while ago for his later years.”
The butterfly asked the elephant what she was called. “I am not sure of any name, to be truthful,” she answered self-consciously. “I know how to help you,’’ the butterfly twinkled to her. “I would like to teach you the same fluttering motion that we make with our wings using your ears, if it’s all the same to you, that is.”
“Wow, I have never heard of a large mammal with wings. How would I use them?” The butterfly told her that she would not be able to fly with them due to their size, and because elephants are not meant to fly or land. She would be able to communicate special things (or signal) with a wing-like opening and shutting of her ears, and feel certain things (such as unexpected events or visitors) before she could see or hear them. “That is good. I’m sure that flying is delightful, but I am afraid of heights."
“You can even use them to relocate your parents, I hope they are being cared for in some place, especially since I have felt different elephants’ trumpeting from other countries near here,” the butterfly expressed. She Elephant was thankful to have a friend giving her an opportunity to have a family again.
“How fast should I flutter them?” she asked the butterfly. “Not too fast, you wouldn’t want to exhaust them or hinder your hearing instead. I can demonstrate.”
“Thank you. It must be helpful to flutter them in the sunlight, so that the signal can reach other animals from a longer distance, if needed,” the elephant suggested. “Exactly”, answered the butterfly who fluttered her wings in several different fashions, some faster than others. She then asked if she could try it in front of the butterfly to see if she knew how it was done. “A perfect idea, I’ll fly a few feet away and higher to watch”, the butterfly answered.
The elephant stood up straight and carefully fanned her ears. The sunlight briefly glimmered off their sides. “Wonderful,” Butterfly said, “I think you have the right idea.” She Elephant, triumphantly made a short, deep trumpet. At that moment, Butterfly was lightly carried towards her ears before the breeze stopped.
She looked about herself and the small plants by her feet. “What happened?” she asked Butterfly. “Where are you?” Butterfly’s echoing voice answered, “I’m up here”.
The elephant was flustered until she realized that the butterfly had been sent into her ears by her trumpet and was caught. “Uh oh, you’re not hurt, are you?” “Butterfly answered, “Oh no, I feel all right, but I’m afraid I am slipping farther in, I think you’ll have to lie down on one side, if it’s all right.” She Elephant did not mind the request and began to kneel and lean with her left ear facing down, until she remembered, “I could free you by opening my ears the way you have just taught me, if it isn’t too fast for you, that is.”
“Okay, I’ll brace myself.” She elephant, fanned her ears once more, and out slipped the butterfly, who proceeded to fly before she could reach the ground. “I am glad you didn’t fall all the way inside or outside of my ear,” sighed She Elephant, “I do apologize.” The butterfly assured her that she was unharmed. “You were so gentle.”
The elephant offered to spray water from her pool onto the butterfly’s wings through her trunk if she was warm or dizzy, until she realized that her wings most likely could not withstand it. “I will mostly just rest my wings until my husband gets back”, she answered. “You have a mate?” She asked. “Yes, and we have eggs ready to hatch in a while. Speaking of children, may I name you?”
“I think that’s a good idea”, answered the elephant. “Let me see, Butterfly thought aloud. “I am from South America, where Latin languages like Spanish are spoken by many, so could I call you 'Marianta' for ‘Maria Elefanta’?’”
“That is very nice, thank you”, said Marianta the elephant.
