The relationship between the elephant and me has been deriorating for some time now. Though he would have you believe otherwise, my growing distaste for the bastard has nothing to do with him being an elephant and a large one at that. It has nothing to do with his abnormal pink, sun, and red-orange hide. It has to do with his attitude toward me and toward respect of smaller life forms generally. He is clueless.
Nevertheless, I was cool with him until he ruined the stairs for everyone. Until he made things difficult on a widespread scale by collapsing for a week in the middle of the hall, leaving some of us to nearly starve for lack of access to the kitchen. Things turned to bitter between the elephant and I only after this point.
Line drawing by Vicki L. Squires, ~1995, © Mission Media, Inc.