So,
*
Once within a barren waste a hungry elephant slogged. Also within this barren waste a colony of click-ants crawled. Though perhaps too predictable, it is true: One day they met, these two.
The contenders first clashed at a lone fruitful tree, each thinking its dollops his own. But the tree truly belonged to neither, you know, though one ate of it and the other called it home. Its fruitlings hung sticky and drippingly licky as the hungry elephant rapturously dined. But before you congratulate him wait just a moment for this tree is not such a find.
“Ouch, ouch,” he said burping.
“Ouch, ouch,” he said slurping.
“What is this?” he thought, “What’s happening to me?”
For though he felt quickly his thirst and hunger slaking, he flinched now and there from a sting. The elephant looked down to find fanned across him a vast host of crawling ants. The ants saw him notice and turned more ferocious to blitzingly seize their chance. The biting redoubled like wildfire, like torrents till finally the elephant groaned:
“Yes, it was too good to be true. This tree is a treasure but here is the measure of how I must pay my due.”
He shook then and stomped then. He bucked then and twisted. But nothing would dislodge the fangs. And then near his ears at last he could hear a clicking that made him insane.
“Conundrum ictus!” he trumpeted. “Conundrum ictus!”
He rushed and he ran and he rubbed through the land trying to bare his hide against the barrenness. He rambled and scrambled through thickets of brambles just desperate to scrape off the pests.
But, as you know, acrobat ants never let go.
*
Our actors lose their faces now. Personalities here dim. We no longer watch the hungry elephant we’ve come to know grapple with ant mandibles, nor the ants who ply his flesh. We witness now interlocked symbols of survival and extinction, the never-ending pull and push between destruction and creation. This contest is neutral. Ultimately neither party suffers bad luck nor enjoys good. For neither holds more significance than the other. Or, really, according to nature, neither holds any significance at all. An absolute principle we confront now–that of nature’s indifference.
You root for the hungry elephant because I began with him and endowed him with human-like thoughts and portrayed him as vulnerable and endearing. While the ants appear predatory and vicious in the tale, and disconcert you already in your suburban kitchen with their alien forms and inhuman speed. But both of these are just relative reactions to the two actors. And relative reactions, by definition, obscure that more absolute principle of nature’s indifference. If, by chance, I had presented more warm and affable ants, your feelings toward them would probably differ. Relieved for them, you would feel now, instead of sick for the hungry elephant and angry at me. Or, if I had not written the story at all, you would sit completely oblivious to their fates. You would move in greater consonance then with nature’s absolute indifference. But all this is just cant, really. No one thinks this way or tells tales from this perspective. It’s no fun. So let’s return to normal.
The story only gets worse for the elephant, I’m afraid. To maintain its integrity it must get worse for him. Maybe, actually, you should stop reading this piece altogether. Life is not a nursery rhyme, you know. For some the luck is bad. For some it is good. Today is a good day for the ants. Everyone takes their turn.
So, finally,
*
Once within a barren waste a hungry elephant stomped. Then within this barren waste the hungry elephant sloshed. Though perhaps too pitiful, it is true: Into the river the elephant flew.
The water’s cool swirling sprang to his thoughts as the elephant raged pain-blind. “The river! The river! Might soothe my hot hurts!” Shot wordlessly straight through his mind. Then he found himself thundering through marshes and reeds and at last kaploshing into swallowing deeps.
Still there he thought little, just flinched at the ants, hoping the rushing current loosen their jaws. And so deeper and deeper and deeper he tramped, seeming to defy all sorts of old laws. But if you looked carefully you plainly could see how the tip of his trunk still easily breathed. His trunk-lips they puffed; his trunk-lips they huffed; as his submerged head and body still soaked. And the click-ants they munched; and the click-ants they crunched; but through the river’s surface began to poke.
Ah-ha! Success!
One ant, then two ants, then three ants they rose, the current tugging them away. And quickly they buoyed to the surface to float for some seconds that searing midday. But not for many. For downstream in an eddy lurked a river bass lucky and ready.
So finally the elephant began to hope, to feel wonder at his predicament, and to think through this strangest of stories and grope for some moral to relate to his friends. And he did come much closer that commonplace noon than any elephant since or before, to escaping the acrobat ant and its doom that rides elephants right to death’s door. And I shall confess to you, though I loathe to reveal, he would have become a hero elephantine, were it not for the very last blow of his ordeal that befell him with reason and rhyme.
Yes, then came the crocodiles.
But bad luck is bad luck, and, as you’ve seen, our elephant was having it.
*
Poor Archibald! Conundrum ictus, indeed! I don’t feel much like finishing this tale.
*
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