Tiger-Lily

I was attending night classes at the University and serving my first year of internship at the San Diego Zoo. Merely a custodial position, my job consisted of ‘handling’ excrement: every kind of animal crap imaginable. I would cart it out by the bucket load, in some cases by the wheelbarrow, then I’d trudge back into the empty cages with a brush and a hose and clean every inch of concrete. My outfit consisted of industrial blue overalls, rubber boots and gloves, a hat, a brush, a scraper and a cheap paper mask.

My favorite chore, as it happens, was cleaning the indoor elephant enclosure. Lily called it the paddock. Lily was the reason I ‘enjoyed’ it so much. She was head of the department, not much older than me, and a recent graduate of the school I was attending. I was smitten.

That’s because Lily was not just brilliant, but attractive. She had thick, black, wavy hair, a perfect face and lively, expressive brown eyes. She wore a silver starfish on a chain around her delicate neck that epitomized her minimalist fashion and idealistic credo. She was simply beautiful, but hopelessly earnest, and that was not a subjective impression. The place was crawling with interns, zoologists, botanists, and research fellows, and I’m sure that many of them invited her out for dinner, lunch, coffee, or drinks, and most, it seemed, were deftly rejected.

With a few exceptions, the women researchers were no more generous to Lily. Offering such ‘keen’ observations as, ‘…such a small woman working with such big, scary animals. Hope she’s not in over her head.’

Despite this treatment, Lily remained optimistic and never complained about other people’s negativity.

My internship was put on hold for the winter, a four-month period in which I nearly got over her. I assumed she would find a man who piqued her fancy.

When I returned the following Spring I was surprised to see that she was still unattached and continued to be socially isolated from her colleagues, but she was more confident in her job and just as devoted to the elephants.

I was pleased to find that I had also earned the privilege of my own assistant, and paperwork took up more of my time which allowed for entire days when I didn’t reek of elephant dung.

Lily appeared to have no more interest in me than anyone else and I was convinced that one day she would marry an elephant, or a very large man. But I noticed that on some occasions, when we were on break or in the cafeteria together, she would put down her papers or clipboard in a very deliberate way, and engage me in direct, frank conversation. Topics ranged from animal husbandry to the odd pronunciation of teats.

One day, out of the blue, our oldest female elephant, Dharma, wouldn’t leave the enclosure, this disrupted my schedule. I stood there, well out of reach of her massive head and prehensile trunk, confounded at her behavior. She emitted a deep, persistent low-pitched rumble, unlike trumpeting, some of which I later learned, is too low to hear but can be felt. Imagine a Tyrannosaurus-Rex, purring. It’s not a comforting sound and you can be sure that I vacated the enclosure with some haste.

I knew it meant something. Elephant communication is complex and not well understood. The rumbling has been associated with ‘let’s go this way,’ or ‘I want to do this thing.’ It’s a decisive, an urging, or a coercing sound—or can be, if it isn’t something else.

Lily was waiting for me in the lunchroom. She looked tired, didn’t smile and seemed distracted. She could be pretty intense sometimes and this was one of those times. I sat down at the table across from her, and without any preamble she confided that she had a ‘major problem’ on her hands, and if she didn’t solve the problem soon, the zoo’s upper management was threatening to impose it’s own drastic, ill-conceived solution.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked, as I peeled the wrapper from my donut.

“I can’t seem to get the elephants to copulate,” she said.

I grinned.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “It’s a huge problem.”

I snorted involuntarily and almost choked on my donut. She simply waited until I was done choking, and said, “Are you done?”

I was emboldened by her lack of empathy while I examined the donut for a motive. “What’ve you tried?”

She pointed her plastic soda straw at me. “I’ve tried almost everything. Every known means and method to coax one of those two into…”

“Doing the deed?”

“Exactly.” She put the straw in her drink and vigorously stirred her soda.

I sat there stupidly, wondering what I could say or do. Was there a class in elephant intercourse? An elephant elixir of amore? “Well…”

“Here’s the thing, David…”

I was pleased to hear that she remembered my name from the previous year.

“What they want me to do, if these two pachyderms don’t start…”

“Getting it on.” I supplied.

“Right,” she nodded, “management wants me to create a hybrid.” She acknowledged my look of incomprehension. “A hybrid is the offspring of two different species. Hybrid’s die, David. They all die. And the emotional impact and trauma on the elephants is—is heartbreaking. I need to find a solution—soon.”

My understanding of elephants was limited, but I had read that elephants do not mate often. When they do, despite appearances, it is the female that chooses whom, or which males get the honor; and the mating period for females is short.

Perhaps my ignorance was a blessing, because I felt that a response was expected of me, but all I could think to say was, “Have you given her a physical examination?”

She cocked her head and squinted at me. “Do you know how hard it is to give an elephant a physical exam?” We stared at each other for about five seconds, and then she said, “Well, you’re about to find out.”

She had the authority to recruit my assistance in this colossal exam process, along with a licensed vet and a team of very quiet, very capable handlers. Once the animal was sedated, she identified a cyst in the ovarian wall which she instructed the vet to remove and stitch up. In the process, they took a generous tissue sample, and presented me with the rest of the gargantuan cyst for the honor of disposing of it.

Whatever feelings I had for Lily, up until then, were badly mangled. I nearly threw up a couple of times and I wasn’t sure how the elephant felt, but the whole event left me traumatized.

When I worked up the courage to visit the elephant enclosure a week later. Dharma had recuperated well, had vacated the enclosure and was out wandering the grounds. Lily saw me approach and said, “There you are. I was starting to worry about you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just not, very good with…”

“Blood and guts?”

“Maybe I should change my Major.”

“What’s your Major?”

“Archaeology.”

She locked her arm around mine and guided me toward the lunch room.

“You’re in the right field. I can tell by the way you handle elephant dung—so deftly. A ninety-million year-old stone corpse should expect the same or similar treatment.”

“Well I wouldn’t throw it out, like I did with the poop.”

“Well no, I suppose not, but you’re the expert. I don’t know anything about poop.”

“Someday…” I tapped my temple. “Someday the knowledge will come in handy.”

“Seriously, David.” she said. “I’m glad I talked to you about Dharma. I just assumed she was perfectly healthy and just being stubborn. I wasn’t really thinking. Now, several of our males are in musk and she’s been positively flirtatious.” She tilted her head, fluttered her eyelashes at me and said, “Can you imagine that?”

“I cuh, I can’t. No.”

“You can’t imagine a flirtatious elephant?”

“Uh, no. Not when I’m looking at you.”

She leaned up against me and said, “Close your eyes and listen—.”

I did so--conscious of her body up against mine, her breath, her perfume.

She whispered, “Would you like to go out for coffee, or dinner sometime?”

I opened my eyes and said, “Yes. I see it. That was amazing.”

“Very good. I’ll take that as a yes, then?”

“Of course,” I said.

Then she smacked me on the ass with her clipboard and said, “Great. I gotta get back to work. Pick me up at seven, Tiger.”