Forgive

Pachyderms have adapted to human society in so many ways, adopting our customs and manners with steady grace. Yet, the average human understands little about pachyderm culture or the ways it remains separate and distinct. Indeed, opponents of integration worry that dark and inhuman secrets remain concealed.

Too often when the two cultures have conflicted, human ways have overpowered our gray neighbors’ traditions. For instance, the rigid, twelve-month calendar has imprisoned the pachyderms’ two-season equivalent. Rainy and Dry have become a list of new names that seem to end in embers. Moreover, pachyderm rituals revolving around migration have disappeared beneath the commercial dominance of Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. But stranger pachyderm celebrations persist, though absent from human awareness. Perhaps our ignorance will lead us into trouble.

In England, pachyderms have accepted St. George’s Day like they’ve accepted chips instead of rice, or overcast instead of monsoon. The pachyderm version of the saint battles a tiger or lion rather than a dragon. Though pythons bear some threat to young pachyderms, the great cats factor more into the tuskers’ mythology. Otherwise, you’d never notice a difference in the celebrations if you visited a pachyderm home. Red crosses hang in patriotic pride, “Jerusalem” plays on Spotify, and curried vegetable pies bake in the oven.

Nonetheless, there exists an alternate holiday, a different evil that pachyderms battle. In that story, the pachyderm takes the lower position, the role of prey, chased and harried by a human on horseback armed with a spear, or sometimes with a gun. But rather than triumphantly piercing the pachyderm, as George does slay the dragon, this horseman finds damnation. A long, curving tusk reaches up to impale the hunter, St. Engelschutz protecting his herd. Integrated and adaptable they may be. Yet, the pachyderms remember, too. And elephants never forgive.