The Cowboy and his Elephant by Malcolm MacPherson

and endangered, were the pachyderms of choice in captivity. If these assumptions held, the baby elephants could be boarders at the ranch for some time to come. And while that worried Jackson, it suited Bob fine, because, more than being merely curious, he was drawn to the orphans.
    From a perch on the fence around the little elephants’ enclosure, he found himself getting to know them as distinct individuals. He could see their intelligence. Each one had a different personality and character. One of them was a clown. She hooked her hind legs on the bottom rail of the fence and swung her trunk, playing with it. Another baby was quiet and serious, and one of them was skittish and shy.
    As he observed them in the paddock, he began to focus his attention on one of them in particular. She was differentfrom the other five. She was the runt, smaller and less assertive. The other five babies pushed her away. It was clear to Bob that this one in particular was going to have the hardest time adjusting to a new life.
    He told Jane, “She’s the littlest. She’s kind of. . . well,
beautiful.
She has long eyelashes. Real pretty amber eyes. Good lookin’. She is a real little lady. She has charm. The others kind of knock her around.”
    The next day he watched her alone in the stall and attended her feedings, standing on the other side of the door while Jackson dipped her trunk in the milk buckets. Bob encouraged her to eat oats from his palm. She was not gaining weight as she should, Jackson told him. Something was wrong. She would not leave her stall unless she was forced out into the paddock with the other elephants. Bob bent over the door and talked to her. Jackson said that the stall must have reminded her of the crate in which she had traveled from Africa. She was afraid of open spaces.
    Bob knew the seductive power of a carrot with horses. He sliced a carrot with his knife and gave the baby elephant a piece. She ate it tentatively, then she held out her trunk for more.
    “Now I’ve got you,” he told her. He stepped into the stall. She reached out her trunk for the carrot. Bit by bit, step by step, he got her to leave the stall on her own. He kept the door open. She could go back in anytime. He watched her out in the paddock. She was curious. She looked up at the sky and lifted her trunk to smell the air. But at the sight of aranch hand riding past on his horse, she folded her ears, lowered her head, and ran back into her stall.
    In the days that followed, with the baby now entering the paddock on her own even without the inducement of carrots, Bob left off training his cutting horses to watch her from the corral fence. Some of his ranch hands joined him on the rails. There were the usual jokes and laughter, which this time Bob found annoying.
    “Cut it out,” he ordered his hands. “She may be a curiosity, but she’s no joke. She’s a beautiful animal. Use your eyes.”
    He was watching the baby with a horse trainer’s eye to see exactly what made her different and appealing. Earlier the colts in the round pen had panicked at the sight of her. With shrieks of sheer equine terror, the young horses had leaped like kangaroos over a six-foot pipe fence to get away from the sight of her. The little runt stood aloof, while the other babies had huddled together for safety. The colts frightened her, Bob could tell, and he tried to understand her fear. He knew how he would feel if his own kind avoided him. Built into the runt’s character, he believed, was an awareness of herself as different.
    Bob worried about who would protect her. She had no adult elephant to come between her and the other babies, who behaved as they would never have been allowed to in the wild. They ganged up on her, took her food, and hit her with their trunks. They behaved as orphaned elephants did in the wild.
    For want of an adult elephant as her protector, Bob made certain that she got her fair share. He shouted at the other babies to move aside.