To Kill a Shooing Elephant

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"In winter when the fields are white
I sing this song for your delight"

........Lewis Carroll

"An' I tell this gruesome tale aright"

.............gps

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".......One day two malhas (boatmen) living in Tanakpur went to the Sarda river to net fish. They stayed out longer than they had intended and the sun was setting when they started on their two-mile walk home. ....they saw two tigers standing on the far side of the channel......and as the tigers were between them and their objective the men crouched down where they were, intending to wait until the tigers moved away...

Presently there was a movement in the grass....(and there) stepped an elephant with big tusks...

When the elephant stepped out on the channel and saw the tigers on the far side it raised its trunk and trumpeted and started to move towards them. The tigers now turned to face the elephant and as it approached them one demonstrated in front of it while the other circled round behind and sprang on its back. Swinging its head round, the elephant tried to get at the tiger on its back with its trunk, and the one in front then sprang on its head. The elephant was now screaming with rage, while the tigers were giving vent to full-throated roars. When tigers roar with anger it is a terrifying sound, and since the screaming of the maddened elephant was added to this terrifying sound, it is little wonder that the malhas lost their nerve, and abandoning their nets and catch of fish, sprinted for Tanakpur at their best speed...

....Opinions on the duration of the fight differed. Some maintained it lasted all night, while others maintained that it stopped at midnight......

In the morning the residents of Tanakpur again assembled on the high ground, and at the foot of the hundred-foot boulder-strewn bank they saw the elephant lying dead....it was evident that it had died of loss of blood. No portion of the elephant had been eaten, and no dead or injured tigers were found at the time or subsequently in the vicinity of Tanakpur.

I do not think that the tigers, at the onset, had any intention of killing the elephant....The fact remains, however, that a big bull elephant, carrying tusks weighing ninety pounds, was killed near Tanakpur by two tigers and I am of the opinion that what started as a lark by a pair of mating tigers when an elephant tried to shoo them out of his way - developed into a real fight. I am also of the opinion that when the second tiger sprang on the elephant's head it clawed out the elephant's eyes and thereafter the blinded animal dashed about aimlessly until it came to the high bank. Here on the round loose boulders, which afforded no foothold, it was practically anchored and at the mercy of the tigers who - possibly because of injuries received in the fight - showed no mercy."

.......Jim Corbett...Jungle Lore

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So, it is never easy to kill an elephant. And the tigers didn't want to kill the elephant at first but...killed it anyway.

This reminds me of George Orwell, narrating ever so beautifully as I told you before, in one of the best essays ever written: Shooting an Elephant, killing an elephant coming out of its masth, ever so unwillingly and in an absolutely clumsy way with a firearm totally inadequate for killing an elephant.

Why did he do it?

George Orwell was no funk. He was a trained Officer of the British Empire, with a stiff upper lip. He didn't want to do it....but he had no escape...a thousand eyes staring at him silently egging him on for their Tamasha and the elephant's flesh...British Honor at stake...if he backs out...he would be jeered and booed of having lost his nerve..Not Done...the Power of Vox Populi...

He was carrying on his young shoulders the heavy weight of the White Man's Burden....He was desperately alone, like many Decision-Makers standing on the spot marked "X".....

All he needed was a Committee....


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