Osama Bin Laden (The Elephant)

Yesterday, I read a story on the Internet about an elephant in scenic India who had gained a reputation around town for being a total dick to pretty much everyone in his entire neighborhood. He ran all over the place crushing houses, trampling people to the point where they were dead or seriously close to being dead, and just sort of making a mess of things in general to the point where the people of India were so tired of his bullshit that it was not even fucking funny.

Usually when I’m sitting around thinking about elephants, I imagine fun-loving animals who just like to hang out and eat peanuts, solve simple math equations, and occasionally get dressed up in a suit and visit Paris, France in hopes that they might one day return home and dazzle their fellow elephants with tales of their wild nights on the town. This particular elephant, however, didn’t seem to be into any of that crap as best I can tell. Instead, he spent most of his time terrorizing the people of India so much that they decided to name him Osama Bin Laden, which is a reference to the world-famous al-Qaeda leader of the same name who is so often associated with the popular September 11th holiday.

According to the story I read on the Internet, Osama Bin Laden (the elephant, not the wel-known extremist whom we tend to think of first when we hear the name Osama bin Laden) was ten feet tall, approximately 45-50 years old, and generally kept to himself when not destroying houses and/or trampling people. Osama bin Laden the elephant was also reportedly not afraid of fire or firecrackers, which I’m guessing everyone had to find out the hard way.

Being a really big elephant and all, Osama bin Laden could travel very long distances in a single day on account of his long legs and the overall joie de vivre that we so often associate with the elephant lifestyle. Despite being a really big elephant, however, Osama bin Laden was also really good at hiding in forests and other areas populated with a reasonable amount of large, elephant-hiding plants. As a result of all of this stuff, he was often hard to find whenever people went looking for him, which is just one more thing Osama bin Laden the elephant had in common with the other, arguably more popular Osama bin Laden that we still talk about to this day.

As illustrated in the popular films Shrek and Shrek II, it seems in life that whenever a plus-sized, misunderstood creature of any sort takes up residence on the outskirts of town, people tend to freak out and chase after him in large, often unruly mobs of people, some of whom have long beards. And this is exactly the sort of thing that happened to Osama bin Laden the elephant, which is where the story gets kind of sad and not so much elephantriffic anymore.

Last week, the elusive Osama bin Laden (the elephant, not the notorious Saudi, Arabian mentioned earlier) was shot and killed by the people of his town in an effort to make sure that he doesn’t destroy any more houses and/or trample any more people to the point where they are dead or seriously close to being dead. The joke is on them though as it turns out that- according to a handful of elephant experts consulted on the incident- whenever an elephant is killed by a human, the other elephants from his herd tend to exact revenge on pretty much every human in sight. I have never witnessed such a thing but I can’t help but think that it is a negative experience for most if not everyone involved. Anyway, it all just goes to show you- never mess with an elephant because when you mess with one elephant you have just gone and messed with a whole shitload of elephants and then you are fucked big time so don’t even think about it. Dammit.

Dave Hill