mammoths.
The herd drifted south and west as the summer drew to a close and the rains came. That winter the herd got as far south as the place we now call Arizona. But Arizona was not like it is today, which is to say very hot and dry and barren. Much of the American southwest was lush and green and tree-covered.
The grazing was wonderful, and that was a good thing because mammoths needed a lot of food! Each full-grown mammoth could eat as much as three or four hundred pounds of grass and leaves and fruits every day.
Temba, making a baby, needed even more. She spent most of each day and sometimes into the night, eating. Eating and eating and eating. She had never been so hungry!
Summer came again and the herd moved north, but not so far north as they had the year before. They spent most of the summer in what we would later call Colorado and Nebraska.
Then it was time to move again.
Now the weather turned bad. The herd had to forage hard to find the food it needed, and sometimes went a few days without water.
But Big Mama was old and wise. She had seen hard times before. She had been over this ground, and many other places as well. She knew where the pools and wallows were, the places where the herd could bathe and frolic after a hot and hungry day. And if there were no pools, she knew every spot where a mammoth could dig with her massive feet and find water under the surface, enough for all her sisters and daughters and nieces to drink enough to get them to the next watering hole.
All through the bad winter they moved west, and when spring came they found themselves looking out at more water than any of them but Big Mama had ever seen, so much water that you couldn’t see the other side of it.
The water was what we would later call the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t good to drink but it was fun to swim in, and they were in a green and lush valley we would later call the Los Angeles Basin.
The mammoths had come to California.
10
SUSAN Morgan opened the door in the side of the big trailer box and stepped inside to a familiar smell. It didn’t surprise her that the hired attendant hadn’t been as scrupulous at cleaning out the traveling stall as he should have been. She’d met the man at the elephant retirement ranch up north and judged him to be one of entirely too many elephant keepers who had no business within a mile of a pachyderm. Elephants frightened him. He relied on a hook to control the beasts, and one day one would squash him like a bug.
Not her problem.
This one was a twenty-five-year-old Indian named Petunia-tu. Most elephants that young would still be working, but Petunia-tu had developed a foot infection a few years back that had left her semicrippled, unable to perform, and a behavior problem when the foot was giving her pain. Little chance of that now; she was doped to the eyebrows with painkillers and tranquilizers for the trip to the big city. The tranks had probably not been necessary. She was a circus veteran, used to traveling to two or three cities a week.
Susan had found her at a game ranch in Simi Valley, run by a humane society, where many circus animals were living out their days on rambling grounds that, in some ways, resembled the African savanna. Not that Petunia-tu would have known that. She was captive-born, in Portland, Oregon, and her ancestors hailed from Sri Lanka. It was an undemanding life up there in the pleasant dry heat, having to do little more than stand around behind a cleverly camouflaged barrier and watch the pickups and SUVs drive by, full of moms and dads and kids pretending to be on safari. But Susan didn’t doubtPetunia-tu could perform her old routines at the drop of a ringmaster’s whistle. Elephants really did have good memories.
Now she was about to embark on a great adventure, and she would never know it.
The keeper had given Susan one useful bit of information about his charge beyond the basic medical information concerning the missing part of
The herd drifted south and west as the summer drew to a close and the rains came. That winter the herd got as far south as the place we now call Arizona. But Arizona was not like it is today, which is to say very hot and dry and barren. Much of the American southwest was lush and green and tree-covered.
The grazing was wonderful, and that was a good thing because mammoths needed a lot of food! Each full-grown mammoth could eat as much as three or four hundred pounds of grass and leaves and fruits every day.
Temba, making a baby, needed even more. She spent most of each day and sometimes into the night, eating. Eating and eating and eating. She had never been so hungry!
Summer came again and the herd moved north, but not so far north as they had the year before. They spent most of the summer in what we would later call Colorado and Nebraska.
Then it was time to move again.
Now the weather turned bad. The herd had to forage hard to find the food it needed, and sometimes went a few days without water.
But Big Mama was old and wise. She had seen hard times before. She had been over this ground, and many other places as well. She knew where the pools and wallows were, the places where the herd could bathe and frolic after a hot and hungry day. And if there were no pools, she knew every spot where a mammoth could dig with her massive feet and find water under the surface, enough for all her sisters and daughters and nieces to drink enough to get them to the next watering hole.
All through the bad winter they moved west, and when spring came they found themselves looking out at more water than any of them but Big Mama had ever seen, so much water that you couldn’t see the other side of it.
The water was what we would later call the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t good to drink but it was fun to swim in, and they were in a green and lush valley we would later call the Los Angeles Basin.
The mammoths had come to California.
10
SUSAN Morgan opened the door in the side of the big trailer box and stepped inside to a familiar smell. It didn’t surprise her that the hired attendant hadn’t been as scrupulous at cleaning out the traveling stall as he should have been. She’d met the man at the elephant retirement ranch up north and judged him to be one of entirely too many elephant keepers who had no business within a mile of a pachyderm. Elephants frightened him. He relied on a hook to control the beasts, and one day one would squash him like a bug.
Not her problem.
This one was a twenty-five-year-old Indian named Petunia-tu. Most elephants that young would still be working, but Petunia-tu had developed a foot infection a few years back that had left her semicrippled, unable to perform, and a behavior problem when the foot was giving her pain. Little chance of that now; she was doped to the eyebrows with painkillers and tranquilizers for the trip to the big city. The tranks had probably not been necessary. She was a circus veteran, used to traveling to two or three cities a week.
Susan had found her at a game ranch in Simi Valley, run by a humane society, where many circus animals were living out their days on rambling grounds that, in some ways, resembled the African savanna. Not that Petunia-tu would have known that. She was captive-born, in Portland, Oregon, and her ancestors hailed from Sri Lanka. It was an undemanding life up there in the pleasant dry heat, having to do little more than stand around behind a cleverly camouflaged barrier and watch the pickups and SUVs drive by, full of moms and dads and kids pretending to be on safari. But Susan didn’t doubtPetunia-tu could perform her old routines at the drop of a ringmaster’s whistle. Elephants really did have good memories.
Now she was about to embark on a great adventure, and she would never know it.
The keeper had given Susan one useful bit of information about his charge beyond the basic medical information concerning the missing part of
Similar Books
