The Baby Elephant

While waiting in the dentist’s waiting room, browsing a magazine, I saw an advert to adopt a baby elephant. There was a picture of the elephant alongside the appeal. Those little sad eyes; a perfect miniature of an adult elephant.

Talk about tapping into my weaknesses.

How could I not adopt the little fella?

I sent the £5 donation and thought nothing more of it, readjusting my focus on giving my teeth their glow up.

Five days later, the doorbell goes, and there he is: a baby elephant on my doorstep.

I looked around, but there was no one to be seen.

There wasn’t even a delivery note pasted to the elephant’s side.

I looked around again.

Still no one. No vans. No nothing except for the elephant.

Perhaps the elephant rang the doorbell with its trunk.

“You’d better come in,” I said to the baby elephant, who seemed to understand the invitation and walked past me into the house.

I took one last glance around outside, and saw only a vaping eleven-year-old. They didn’t look like they worked in the elephant delivery business, so I closed the door to join what was now clearly my elephant.

Standing there in the hallway, it turned its head to look up at me. 

I had no idea what its expectations of me were. If I knew that an elephant was coming to live with me, I’d have read up on how to keep one.

How should one welcome an elephant into the house?

“Umm . . .”

First things first, I put a bowl of water down.

*

A week later, I was back in the dentist’s waiting room for a follow up, a different magazine on my lap.

There was another advert there, this time to adopt a herd of goats. A brief flutter of temptation rippled through me, but I decided against it. Maybe if I ever do move to the Cotswolds . . .

I tore the advert out of the magazine and stuffed it into my coat pocket.

The visit to the dentist didn’t take long, so Englebert Dinkytrunk was happy enough to wait for me outside, grazing on rosehips and trampling the flowers.

If I’d known that adopting a baby elephant meant I’d end up with an elephant to look after, I still would’ve done it. Honestly, Englebert is the easiest person I’ve ever lived with – or he would be if he was a person. He’s as good as gold.

While I waited for him to finish snacking, chewing on a rosehip of my own, someone I saw in the dentist’s last week walked past me, struggling with their baby alpaca.

vss #64

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