Read Online Violation by Sallie Tisdale - Free Book Online Page B

suit!”
    Roger Henneous ducked in the door, carrying an electronic thermometer. Steadily, half bored, he took Tamba’s skin temperature while Haight drew blood. Behind Henneous, Hanako bobbed gracefully. She rubbed her head against his back, the bulbous gray easily dwarfing the man in his brown uniform. Henneous ignored her, but I couldn’t: I ventured too close to the door, and she was distracted by me, by my new smell, and came to press her trunk against me. It was a wet, bristly live thing, like the head of an anxious reptile, and she inhaled me in a rush of wind. By the time Haight stepped between us, scolding me for my reckless move, she had kissed tight to my shoe and was marching purposefully up my leg.
    More cows were waiting in the viewing room, and the keepers rushed to finish before the zoo gates opened. This is the first place that people come, to see the elephants. Several feet insidethe glass panel are widely spaced bars as thick as a man’s arm; because Chang Dee was small enough to slip through the bars, four chains were strung between them. Sunshine held perfectly still while the keepers bled her ear. “She loves being treated like a grownup,” Sanford said, and rewarded her with two bunches of blackened bananas. Chang Dee reached for the fruit with his undersized trunk, and Sunshine marched away, bananas held high.
    Elephants have many voices: they trumpet, rumble, squeal, growl, roar, snort. While Haight was patting Rosy under the “forearm,” a high metallic whine began. “I gotta get some grease—she needs oiling,” he said, laughingly, and only then did I realize that the whine was elephant speech. Rosy, Pet, Me-Tu, and Sunshine began to cry together, a shrill, stridulous, and very loud clamor rolling through the high-ceilinged room. It was an almost painful yet beautiful noise, split by belly rumbles, birdlike eeks and squawks, and the ululating song of whales. The men paid no attention and drew blood from Rosy’s wrinkled ear, their voices raised above the din. Sanford scratched his back with the ankus and watched Chang Dee try, for the hundredth time, to climb over the chains strung between the bars. As suddenly as it had started, the squealing stopped. In the silence, Sanford began singing a Chuck Berry song to Sunshine, and the elephants joined in. There were wet exhalations, belches, growls and grunts, a repeating sonar blip, a keening whistle. The men passed out rewards, and Sanford gave Pet three bunches of bananas. Why three, I asked him, when the other cows got two?
    â€œBecause she’s Pet,” he answered with a grin. “They don’t get any better than that.”
    IN ALL WORK with Asian elephants, there is one limit—the puzzling circumstance of musth. Cow elephants, and bulls out of musth, can be dangerous; the casual motions of the keepers in stroking an unchained cow mask a constant caution. But musth bulls are deadly. Knowing this, one sees in a new light historical references to the use of elephants. In the Rome of Pliny’s time,people would sit down to a banquet, and then a ceremonially dressed elephant, picking its way through the crowd, would come and take its place at the table. I’m sure it was an uncommon spectacle—the gargantuan guest swaying past the seated diners. But what a risk! I thought of the Romans when I found a photo of Morgan Berry and Thonglaw the other day. Berry stood in front of the bull, who was seated on the ground, his front feet dangling high and Berry’s son, Kenneth, clinging to his back. All three seemed in a kind of repose, still for the camera, waiting to do the next trick.
    Musth occurs in Asian males beginning around the age of ten, and recurs once or twice a year. (Whether or not musth occurs in African elephants is a subject of considerable debate.) It is both a physical and a behavioral phenomenon. The first sign is usually drainage from the temporal glands (once called