Hey, you. Yeah, you.
I get that you have problems. I have problems too. 100 of us are killed a day in Africa alone. Only 38% of us remain from the last decade. Shit is rough. I get it. But how would you feel if, every time someone wanted to address one of these problems, they used you as the reason? I’m the elephant in the room, and I’m sick of your shit.
We’re just like all of you. We just want to feel included. To feel valid. To feel loved. We want to be ourselves without fear of repercussions. Me? I want to throw my trunk up in the air like I just don’t care. I want to splash some pond water all over my bare body and feel the wind on my massive grey back. I want a nice elephant boy with good family values to see how thicc my hide is and squeeze my ample ass. Like all complex beings, we value the simple things.
You want our tusks, but you don’t want us. We’re more than a little ivory. We are people too. Or, like, elephants. In our language, that’s how we say it, alright? I would have thought you humans were experts in taking stuff from Africa and Asia while simultaneously shitting on it and giving absolutely nothing in return. Can you not have some compassion?
Clearly, human memory is pretty bad. You all keep doing the same terrible stuff over and over. But us? We remember. We remember every look you’ve ever given us. We remember you calling us “almost as smart as humans” as you trip over the item you just put on the ground. We remember Bella from DC, who came to Thailand to find herself and thought that I liked bananas a lot more than I did. You’ve already got the shot, Bella. You don’t need 20 more takes.
And we remember what it is like to be considered the obvious problem. Newsflash, guys. We aren’t the problem; you are. But we don’t call you the “human in the room,” do we? If anything, we’re more likely to call you the “human in the savannah who’s chasing after us with an AR-15.”
If I wanted, I could squish you right now. There are so many ways. I could step on you, or flop my whole body onto you as you stand unsuspectingly sipping your damn vodka cranberry (what is this, sophomore year?), or I could go the whole nine yards and impale you first for the heck of it. But I won’t. Because we aren’t you. We mind our own business. We don’t sit on the couch all day, mostly because it’d break. We’ve got built-in air fans. We’ve already crushed the patriarchy. And our babies aren’t so red and splotchy. Why are your babies so red and splotchy? Ours are objectively adorable.
You’re already things making pretty hard for us. We each consume 300 liters of water a day, but you’re trying your darnedest to use up all the water too, aren’t you? We can’t even have this one thing. And there are just so many of you. You keep making more. Our local superstar Hairy Clark Jr. released his “My Land” before your guy did, but you don’t see that in your “mainstream media,” do you? This land is our land, you melanoma-prone skinwads.
Okay, okay, I’m getting a little heated, sorry—probably because you keep increasing the worldwide temperature, but that’s a topic for another time. Just like some of you, all we’re asking for is a little visibility, safety, and consideration before you run your tiny pink mouths. So next time, when you’re about to discuss “the elephant in the room,” stop for a moment and think: how would that make me feel? In return, we will stop making fun of you in our weekly Sahara-region open mics. (With the exceptions of Dan Quayle, Jerry Falwell and your mango Mussolini.)
And for the record, mice don’t scare us, you bipedal imbeciles. You do.