Elephants, in memory and literature

Three days after the funeral for Ron Taylor, the New York Times posted an article that made me think of Ron, a church musician, amateur actor and playwright and fiction writer, who had helped establish the Wilson Writers Group. Perhaps the most significant accomplishment in the few years that Ron was part of the writers’ group was the publication of his children’s book, titled “The Day Buttercup Played Hooky From the Circus.” He said the idea of the book simply came to him, unbidden, one day, and he wrote it down. Often humorous, the book can appeal to adults as well as children.

My introduction to the Writers Group in 2017 included a presentation by  Dawn Reno Langley, a successful N.C. writer who offered advice to the aspiring authors in the public library’s assembly room. Ms. Langley’s book, “The Mourning Parade,” focuses on elephants in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. Natalie DeAngelo packs up her life and heads to Thailand as a volunteer veterinarian, hoping to assuage her anguish over the senseless deaths of her two sons back in the United States. The novel portrays elephants as sensate, emotional creatures with highly developed social and familial organization.

The New York Times on Wednesday published an article about a video showing a group of elephants joining together in the wild to mourn with members of their herd, going so far as lifting up a deceased calf to carry to a place for burial.

The newspaper article certainly validates Ms. Langley’s view of elephants as sentient, wise creatures with principles of caring and group mourning similar to humans’ practices.

Ron’s children’s book is simpler than either Ms. Langley’s novel or the N.Y. Times’ fascinating report on elephant behavior. “Buttercup” is about a circus elephant who slips away from his handler. The little boy standing nearby becomes the elephant’s handler, and the two go on a mid-morning hike through town with hilarious results.

Ron would love to know that even the N.Y. Times agrees that elephants are intelligent, thinking, loving animals who have emotions much like our own. “The Mourning Parade” in Langley’s book title refers to the reaction of sanctuary elephants when an elephant died. Ron’s book was not based on hours or years of research; it was based on love and humor that came from his creative imagination.

As elephants disappear from circuses and zoos, leave it to writers like Dawn Langley and Ron Taylor, and the NY Times, to remind the world that these endangered, intelligent, and loving animals are sharing this earth with us.