The Elephant and the Rat
Elephants are not controversial. I am fairly sure that most people agree (two hedges in a row) that elephants are majestic, beautiful, intelligent, and worthy of respect. These aren’t attributes that are seriously debated. This is not a point of heated discussion in bars and coffee shops and high school auditoriums during debate season.
So, when I regretfully made my daily to Yahoo! News and saw an article about a baby elephant at Smithsonian Zoo, I thought, how nice. This will be a break. I bet it’s cute and we can all talk about how cute it is. The article strikes a hopeful yet cautious tone. The new baby elephant, born at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, still unnamed, was “rejected” by her mother. That’s a word added by Yahoo. The Smithsonian blog post itself makes no such claim. But I was quickly reassured that an older female elephant in the zoo had taken the baby elephant under her trunk, so to speak, and all was going to be okay. Give the mother time and space, and she’ll come around. She’s new to this. This happens. The zookeepers are knowledgeable and patient and caring. All is well.
And in that impulse I have, that I can never seem to shake, I scroll down to the comments section. Of Yahoo news. I know. I open the comments, which are collapsed by default—a design decision made somewhere with A/B testing or perhaps to track engagement, or perhaps actually to protect the tiny parts of our humanity that still remain when we browse the internet—and immediately see that the top two comments have been removed by the moderator. In an article about a baby elephant. Okay.
The third comment stopped me cold, and I read it at least a half dozen times. “How a democRAT treats her young for $200, Alex. (edited)” I must have put my head in my hands, and leaned against my dining room table, and let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a cry for help, and then read it again. The cry for help wasn’t because of the message content, no. It was because I knew what would come next: I would be clicking on this person’s profile and reading their comment history. My alien hand syndrome was acting up again, and there I was, inside this person’s mind.
They spoke of Jesus, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, and of mRNA and spike proteins, and of 9/11. They seemed particularly preoccupied with biological preparations that provide active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease, aka vaccines. The comments were rapid fire. 17 minutes ago. 16 minutes ago. 14 minutes ago. 11 minutes ago. Articles about celebrities and current events and baby elephants. The actual content of the articles did not matter—they were simply prestretched canvases, ready for paint to be thrown.
And then I wondered, did unnamed baby elephant get vaccinated? It was a question that our commenter had not seemed to consider. According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, there is a new mRNA (oh no) vaccine for elephants, which protects against Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV). They claim that “this deadly virus is the leading cause of death for juvenile Asian elephants in North America and Europe, with a mortality rate of 60-80 percent.”
The person probably didn’t consider that there was no agenda, not one that my imagination can conjure, at least. No plot to control or brainwash or harm or kill elephants. I doubt few, if any, mustaches were twisted. It appears to have been the result of years of effort by a consortium of scientists and private industry. People who are presumably interested in science, and who are interested in elephants not dying unnecessarily.
I would like to sit down with this person. Buy them a coffee. I imagine they’d be scanning their surroundings suspiciously—what is that car doing? What exactly is in this supposedly free coffee? Does the person across from me know about raw milk—and say, hey. It’s okay. There’s some people that wanted to do cool science. And also help elephants. And this little elephant is probably going to live a decent life because of their efforts. Aren’t you okay with that? You’re not angry, are you? Can we sit and talk about this?
I want to hear about where they grew up, and what sorts of things their parents told them. I want to know what school was like, and who helped them through life. I want to know about when they fell in love, and if they can explain why it happened. I want to know if they were ever six years old and held a dog in their arms and wanted only good things for it. I want to ask them if they knew that even rats—the carriers of disease and destroyers of grain and livelihood—have been the object of love of and affection of adults and children. And, just like an elephant, just like us, are trying to get by however they can. And if I can get them to concede that, maybe we can move on to bigger things. And we’ll make a deal. I’ll stop reading Yahoo News articles if you stop commenting on them. We’ll both be better for it.