The Cowboy and his Elephant (12 page)

“Then I’ll hear what he has to say.”

A telephone conference was arranged. Neither Bob nor Maguire felt comfortable at first talking with each other. To
Maguire, Bob was an amateur who knew nothing about elephants; for Bob, Maguire was considering doing what Bob felt
he
should be doing, as one who knew animals better than most people and had trained horses for most of his adult life.

“Well, Mr. Norris,” Maguire said on the phone, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to work for you or not.”

Bob asked, “What’s your problem?”

“Well, a lot of these guys have me come and work with them, and they start telling me how to train their elephant.”

“Look, Mister, you know elephants. I don’t. You know how to train them. I can train cutting horses, and I had a bear once. Elephants, I’m out of my class.”

Maguire liked the sound of that. As Bob talked and he listened, he heard something else. He thought, You put a needy animal together with a man like Bob, and you get
magic!
That’s what it is. Elephants are unlike any other animal. Anybody who spends any time around them will tell you that they are addictive because of their intellects and because of the interaction they have with humans. It is unique. It’s not like a dog. You are dealing with a
brain.
I could tell by what Bob said that he was getting up in the morning and saying, “I can’t
wait
to get down to the barn.”

Bob told Maguire, “My wife and I want Amy to become a part of the ranch routine. I don’t know where it will lead. I just want her trained so that I can go off and commune with her up by the water tanks. I don’t care about tricks.”

Maguire thought, He’s already found a relationship with her. The level of commitment and understanding is what they give to each other. He said, “I can give you about thirty days and that’s it. It’ll cost you, though.”

“How much?” asked Bob.

“Twelve thousand dollars, take it or leave it.”

Bob said, “Holy cow!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I guess we’re talking about the laws of supply and demand here.”

Said Maguire, “You bet we are.”

As soon as he got off the phone, Bob called Carole, who said that Maguire’s fee was her birthday present to him.

Bob told her, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care of it. It’s worth it to me. If she’s not trained and she hurts someone, they’ll call her ‘out of control’ and ‘wild’ and ‘a rogue’ elephant, and they’ll kill her. I can’t let that happen.”

W
eeks later Maguire piled out of his rented car at the ranch, ready to go. It took no more than a glance for him to see what he was up against: His student was a brat!

No wonder she needs training, he thought. It’s not that she’s wild; she’s allowed to do anything she wants. He had never seen anything quite like her. Amy went where she wanted, when she wanted. She frisked people’s pockets for treats. She explored their private parts with her trunk. She sniffed their faces and toyed with their hair. She played with
Michelle and Butch until she decided to stop. She obeyed no commands; she
knew
no commands. She knew no limits. As far as Maguire could tell, it was a miracle she hadn’t already hurt someone.

Notwithstanding, he saw with his own eyes what he had sensed talking to Bob on the telephone. Bob and Amy enjoyed a unique relationship that was new in Maguire’s experience with animals and people. He thought, Bob takes better care of Amy than 99 percent of people take care of their
children.
His goodwill just flows to her. There’s something very special about him that will make my work a whole lot easier, even if she
is
a brat.

W
here do we start?” Bob asked Maguire.

“With a talk, you and me.”

“You’re training her, not me.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Then what do you have to tell me?”

Maguire pointed to Amy. “She’s wild. I think you should understand that. This animal is not a pet.”

Bob looked at him hard. “Excuse me, but she’s like my horse. We’re partners. That’s how I feel.”

“But she
isn’t
a horse, Mr. Norris. She’s an elephant.”

“What I mean to say—a lot of cowboys look at a horse like a pickup truck that takes them from point A to point B. They never reach down and pat it. When they’re ropin’ they never say, ‘Good job, Buddy,’ and scratch its back. When I’m
out there with my horse, he’s my partner, and that’s how I look at Amy. She
is
just like my horse. Hell, she thinks she
is
a horse.”

“I repeat, she is an elephant. Look with your own eyes.”

“Listen, you’re the trainer.”

“Yes, I am,” said Maguire.

“But I’m her friend. She’s my little girl.”

“By that you mean what?”

“I mean that you are not to hurt her, abuse her, or talk harshly to her in any way during her training. And none of that ‘negative reinforcement’ stuff either, not even with your voice. Take it or leave it. I’m paying you twelve thousand dollars. I want only the best.”

Maguire had failed to get his meaning across. “I need a common language to train her with,” he explained. “I have to work with
something
if this charm school is to succeed.”

“It’s up to you.” Bob paused a second. “But I’m keeping my eye on you.”

R
ight from the start, Amy wanted to please the teacher, though like a child on her first day at school, she had nerves. Bob and Michelle reassured her with their presence. The ranch hands watched by the fence. Michelle stayed close and seemed nervous too, as Amy began her first lesson.

Maguire, wearing jeans, a work shirt, and boots and carrying a long metal-tipped stick called an
ankus
at first confined
Amy’s movement with soft ropes tied to her legs and looped around her neck. He rewarded her with treats and words of encouragement when she did what he asked. He tapped her with the
ankus;
the hook, Maguire told Bob, represented the authority of the one giving the orders.

At first Amy associated the ropes, Bob thought, with her capture in Africa, with being chased, and with slaughter. Whatever the reason, she fought the ropes. She clearly did not like Maguire, who met her stubbornness with his own, until Amy came to see that he meant her no harm and would not let her have her own way.

The goal was to make her lie down on the command “Stretch out!” She clearly felt vulnerable lying down in front of Maguire. After constant repetition, however, she understood that she had nothing to fear. She probably wondered why Maguire asked her endlessly to lie down, then get up again, perhaps twenty times a training session. It was a tiring exercise for her. Maguire used her exhaustion to help her learn; the more tired, the more pliant she became as a student. He pulled her down with the ropes, then, on his command, let her get up again. She bellowed and cried, clearly with annoyance. As the days passed, she grew to understand what she was being asked to do. And she complied.

Next he taught her to pay attention with the command “Trunk Up!” Amy caught on and rolled her trunk back along her forehead and raised her head to receive a “monkey biscuit” treat in her open mouth. A loudly spoken “All right!”
signaled her to relax. She lifted her leg at the knee; and she turned in the directions that Maguire asked her to.

“Damn, she’s mellow,” he told Bob, when Amy flopped on the ground without being told.

Watching him work over several days, Bob grew to like Maguire. The feeling was returned. The two men, one old enough to be the other’s father, had more than Amy in common. They shared a love of animals and talked late at night, always about animals. For the first time Bob could discuss his passion with someone who understood Amy and knew all about elephants.

One afternoon Maguire and Bob visited the local zoo to see what zoos were like for elephants. Maguire had nothing against them, though some zoos bothered him, and the local zoo was one of them. He pointed out to Bob the lone elephant that stood on a sun-baked concrete pad with a bucket of water and only a pile of hay for feed. She had no companion, not even a pet chicken or goat. She rocked back and forth out of boredom, hitting her trunk against a steel door.

“And people wonder why they turn rogue,” said Maguire. “That animal is lost. Just look at her.”

Bob was shocked. “Are the zoos all like this?” he asked Maguire.

“No, thank goodness.”

“I’d never want that for Amy,” Bob said.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Maguire told him.

The next morning Bob was helping Maguire. After a particularly
strenuous session, he asked for a recess. He wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve.

“Army, something’s wrong,” he told him.

“What do you mean?”

“You say to her, Amy, down.’ Then I got to pull her down with the rope here. You’re getting paid, and I’m doing all the work.”

Maguire said, “That’s because I’m the teacher.”

“And Amy’s the pupil.”

“No, that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Norris.
You’re
the pupil.”

At the end of about thirty days, Army
and
Bob had taught Amy as much etiquette as she was ever going to learn.

T
he cowhands came to Amy’s graduation ceremony, as did Carole and, of course, Maguire and Jane, and Amy’s veterinarian, Laura Harris, who arrived dressed as if for a party. Bob’s stallion Big Bob wore a dress saddle. Michelle and Butch wandered around looking for handouts. Bob’s grandson’s elementary school class filled the bleachers of the ranch’s indoor showring, usually used for horse sales.

Over to one side, Jane was chatting with an invited member of the local press.

“Is Bob proud of Amy? My,
yes
! Ask him about all the pictures of her that he carries in his back pocket. Any time we go to a dinner party, he pulls out his Amy photos. He passes them around like she was his granddaughter.”

What Jane did not say was that their friends were so
accustomed to being shown photos of Amy that whenever Bob pulled out his wallet they groaned, “Here he goes again!”

For this occasion Bob dressed in a spiffy Western outfit—clean jeans, a cotton-candy colored shirt with fringe and pearl snap buttons, a colorful bandanna, and a clean, nearly new hat. He wore a belt with the big gold-etched oval buckle of the National Cutting Horse Association. Astride Big Bob, he entered the ring with Amy. The applause echoed off the metal roof.

Now Amy was attentive, watchful, and measured. She had a purpose, which was to obey Bob and Maguire. And she even seemed proud of her training. She began her “graduation exercise” as she’d been taught: With Bob and Big Bob at her side, she followed a series of routine movements. She skipped on alternate front feet in what Bob described to his audience as “break-dancing.” She waved a little American parade flag in her trunk. Next Bob handed her a handkerchief, which she waved in imitation of Iraqi troops’ surrender in the recent Gulf War.

Bob walked beside her around the ring and up close to the bleachers, where the children could touch her when she stretched her trunk toward them. Bob hummed the
Star-Spangled Banner,
and Amy stood at attention on an elevated stand.

Watching from the bleachers, Maguire told T. J., “She likes the limelight. My God, she’s a ham.”

Bob addressed the children in the audience, “You kids
take naps?” Without waiting for a reply, he told Amy, “Stretch out!” but she looked at him and, apparently unprepared to take a nap, just walked away.

Now Bob was uncertain. He was powerless to stop her from doing anything she wanted, in spite of her training. In her own time, however, to Bob’s relief, she returned to him, and then she finally lay down for “a nap.” Feeling more confident, Bob reached his hand into a carpenter’s apron he had tied around his waist for a “treat,” and popped a cookie into her mouth. Amy stood up again, and Bob draped a bright pink corsage on a long ribbon around her neck and gave her a scrolled “diploma” as proof of her graduation.

“She learned at school, and it wasn’t always easy,” he told the kids. “Cowboys and their elephants
stand apart.”

Amy blew on an oversize harmonica, while Bob sang off-key,
“The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the live long day.”
He took off his hat and waved to the audience. “I just want to tell you folks, and you kids too, that Amy here, this little girl of mine, has come through what most of us never could. She never complained. She did it on her own, and she had a lot more to overcome than a lot of people. She is an example of what
we
can do, if we care to. I want you to know I’m proud of Amy.”

Laura Harris stood at one side of the ring. Observing Bob and Amy together, she thought, Amy’s temperament is sunny due to the rapture of Bob. It’s just that simple. There are animals with good personalities and difficult personalities,
the same as people. There are those that have had hard times and easy times, like people too. The point of it is that Amy has found happiness with Bob. All the rest is in the past. Bob is her reality, and she thrives in it. She’s happy at last, and that’s that.

I
n the days that followed, Amy picked up where she had left off before her training—doing exactly what she wanted, where and when the spirits moved her.

Bob had looked forward to her companionship when he rode up to the water tank, where he sometimes went to commune with nature. He liked the idea of having her to talk to, but Amy could not be persuaded to go. She liked her paddock and stayed near her stall, her toys and wallow, and the bales of alfalfa stacked near the barn.

One morning Bob rode out the driveway on Big Bob, with Butch and Jo trailing along. He looked back over his shoulder. Amy was following him with a tentative step. He did not try to hide his pleasure. He continued to the outbuildings near the wallow. Amy stopped. She turned back slowly, and Bob rode on.

That afternoon when Bob got back to the barn, a stranger was standing by a truck with the official insignia of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The inspector was dressed in black rubber boots and a faded green zippered jumpsuit and he carried a clipboard. Bob tipped his hat in greeting. The inspector told him that he had come about Amy.