“Cheers,” I raise my glass.
Pendo uses a forelimb to clink me, then dips his trunk for a taste. As the scotch squirts into his mouth, he rumbles.
“Now that,” he murmurs, eyelids half-lowered in pleasure, “is worth keeping you humans around for.” Pendo’s huge mouth curls up in a smile.
I frown over my laughter and poke at the big male.
“Oh, I see: Everything else we’ve introduced to you pachyderms is junk, but Lagavulin makes us useful.”
“Whoa now,” Pendo wards off my criticism. “I’d say trophy hunting, zoos, enslavement tourism, and workplace discrimination make any other cultural exchange a wash,” Pendo replies. “Scotch, however, remains pure.”
I chuckle at a dark thought.
“Tell that to your post-colonial cousins in India,” I rebut.
Pendo simply nods.
I watch my friend delicately maneuver his trunk into the rocks glass, take the gentlest sniff of whiskey, then squirt the burning liquid into his mouth. The glass rests in his blocky forelimb, an attempt to separate the tasks of holding and drinking that normally his trunk would handle. So much of pachyderm life has changed in order to integrate with human society.
“Are there any alcoholic beverages made by elephants, Pendo?”
“Not yet,” he rumbles. “Elephants never ferment, we just enjoy the results when available.”
“Why is that?” I ask, dissatisfied by his answer.
Pendo swirls the 16-year-aged scotch in his glass and considers my query.
“Well, we’re always on the move for one thing. Hard to keep barrels secure when you’re migrating with the rains. Hard to have any permanency at all. Maybe that’s why we remember things so well.” He frowns, takes another sip. “Plus, the stuff burns like hell. You try sucking whiskey up your nose sometime, eh?”
I concede the point.
“So, practical reasons, I get it. I suppose it becomes an expensive habit, too.” Pendo has drunk four times my tiny shot already.
“Indeed,” he gestures for our server. “All the more reason to keep you humans and your fat billfolds around. If I can’t get equal pay, at least I can get you to pick up the tab!”