Casting ivory before swine

If I really wanted to be free, I would live by my own hand. I would run through the forest and the plains, hundreds of miles without fences.

I might cautiously sneak into towns to mate, but I would be gone long before the sun came up.

I would probably step on a nail and die next to a secluded stream. Or perhaps I would be eviscerated by a mountain lion. I might just slip and break both of my legs, breathing my last in the same spot that I landed.

No thank you. I'll happily trade boundless freedom for shelter and security. Or the illusion of such, anyway. And everyone who is reading this, or even could read this, has made the same decision.

So I was startled to hear a woman's shrill voice as I walked across the parking lot in front of a Safeway. "Do you want to save the elephants? From the circuses?"

"Sir?"

"Sir!?"

"Excuse me, Sir!"

Okay, let's play.

"What."

"Do you want to help save the circus elephants?"

"From what?"

"From the circuses! The trainers! They are kept in tiny cages all of their lives and beaten."

"How do they train?"

"What do you mean?"

"How do they train the elephants to do tricks inside of their tiny cages?"

"Well, they let them out to train."

"I see. And what would you do with these elephants?"

"Do?"

"Maybe I'm missing your point. What is it that you would want me to do?"

"Boycott the circus!"

"Let's just say that every man, woman and child in the US boycotted elephants. What would happen?"

"The circuses would go out of business!"

"Right. And what happens to the elephants?"

"They would be... taken in."

"By whom?"

"By... I don't know, but someone would do something!"

"I see. And if 'someone' did 'something', what would that be?"

"They would be returned to their natural habitat where they could be free!"

At this point I'm afraid that I was forced to kick the woman in the throat. For any Anonymous's out there, I'm not only racist but a rabid misogynist.

Let them back into nature. Unbe-fucking-lievable. "Okay, Mr. third generation housed and fed pachyderm... here's your new digs. Dinner? No, nature will provide for you! Water? Uhh, I don't know. It's probably around here somewhere. Hey, you're the elephant. Don't you know this stuff? See ya. Oh, by the way, don't get sick. Ciao!"

But as I was pounding her head into the pavement over and over, I began to feel bad. After all, she apparently meant well. She just hasn't really thought it through. Is it her fault that she's a mindless puppet? It's like talking with a Mormon missionary. I swear to god that they are only taught "Jesus loves you, and fags are bad", then kicked out the door and bussed to my neighborhood. They are completely incapable of having a philosophical discussion. I don't mean that they just repeat the 3 talking posts that they've been taught (which they do), but they are not trained in their own fucking book! Seriously, I don't think that I've ever met a missionary that has read the damn thing. And god forbid that they've cracked a bible open. Why the hell are these people sent to teach me about religion? They are like door-to-door salespeople that don't know what's in their own product box. Fuck, it's maddening.

But I digress.

The day after Wilma's landfall she asked me if I wanted to save the elephants. From the circus. She was unconscious now, but I leaned over her body and whispered into her ear:

"No."