Phylicia the Elephant



Phylicia The Elephant

Day 1

Hello, my name is Phylicia. Today, is my 10th birthday and my Dad just gave me this diary as a present. He said that I should write something in it every day. Anything that I am thinking about or anything that I discover about the world around me. He also told me it would help me learn how to write better. Gee, thanks Dad! Why does he always have to turn everything into a school lesson?

I will start by writing about who I am, how I came to be 10 years old, and living in this place.

I was born 10 years ago to my Mom and Dad in a wildlife preserve in India in the state of Kerala, the most literate state in India, according to an International survey Dad just showed me. Dad also explained to me that he read in National Geographic magazine that our sanctuary is known as one of the "ten paradises of the world." We are Indian Elephants, belonging to the Asian Elephant family. We are not the same as African elephants. We are not as tall as African elephants and our ears are smaller, too. I have family all over Asia, in the hills below the Himalaya Mountains, in Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, and even in China.

Our sanctuary is very beautiful, with lots of different plants, like palm trees and tall grasses. I think the roots of the grasses in the fall season are the tastiest. Bamboo is very delicious, too, especially in the spring time.

Day 2

I don't know what has happened, but this morning I noticed that my trunk is all swollen and pink, and itchy, too! Mom told me I could not stay home from school. I didn't know want my friends to see me with my pink and swollen trunk. Sure enough, Raji was the first one to see me. Raji can be such a jerk some times. "Oooh! What happened to you, Phylicia?" he said. "Did you trip and fall into the canal?" "Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed. Then all the others came over to stare at my trunk. It was an awful day. I just wanted to die! Mom told me that it was not so bad and that pink was a nice color for me. Good old, Mom. Always trying to see the bright side of things.

Dr. Gupta, the Sanctuary veterinarian, came by to check on me when I got home from school, today. He said that I had an allergy. "What's an allergy?" I asked Dr. Gupta. He said that it was probably something that I had eaten that did not agree with me and that is why my trunk had turned pink and all swollen. He gave me some medicine that is supposed to help.

Dr. Gupta asked me and Mom if I had eaten anything different recently. Mom told him that she had not seen me eat anything new or different from our usual foraging areas in the Sanctuary. Then, I remembered that at school, my best friend, Suri and I swapped lunches. She had a peanut butter sandwich and I had a veggie sandwich. That was the answer: I had an allergic reaction to the peanut butter. Dr. Gupta explained that I had an allergy to peanuts. "Oh my goodness!" I cried. "But, I love peanuts and so do all my friends!" My mother let out a sign of relief. "Thank goodness is it nothing more serious." She said.

Dr. Gupta assured me that there were lots other foods I could eat instead of peanuts, but I needed to be careful about checking all the labels on other stuff I eat, to be sure there was not a trace of peanuts in them.

After Dr. Gupta left, Suzy the vet tech at our Sanctuary brought us a basket with some stuff I had never seen before. She said that I could eat these instead of peanuts and peanut butter. Suzy showed Mom and me how I could eat almonds. She said that Mom could make me almond butter sandwiches and I could bring them to school for my lunch.

Day 3

Today, my trunk is no longer pink or swollen and I headed off to school with my lunch; an almond butter sandwich. When lunch time arrived, Suri and Raji wanted to know all about my visit with Dr. Gupta. "What did Dr. Gupta do to your trunk?" Asked Suri. "Did it hurt?" Asked Raji.

"Dr. Gupta was very nice." "No, it did not hurt." I said. As always, Suri wanted to swap sandwiches with me. "What kind of sandwich did your mom make for you, today, Phylicia?" Asked Suri. "Suri, my mom made me something new, today." I said. Raji was now very interested. "What is that?" he wanted to know, as he noticed the almond butter oozing out of my sandwich. "Is that a new kind of peanut butter?" "Well, kind of." I said. "It's made from almonds not peanuts." I said.

Can I try some of that? Asked Suri. Raji was now very interested, too. So, I let them both have a taste of my almond butter sandwich. Suri and Raji did not know what to make of this new taste. I explained about my allergy and how peanuts were now off my list of foods forever. They both agreed that it was a horrible thing to no longer be able to eat even one little peanut. I told them I was okay with it, so long as I could eat almonds and other nuts instead.

Day 4

Today, I had a real amazing day! Raji introduced me to his new friend, Sumir. Sumir had just arrived in our Sanctuary. He is a little older than the three of us but not by much. Sumir told us that he had been with a traveling circus that had recently decided to no longer have elephants in their shows. Sumir was sent to our Sanctuary because of Dr. Gupta. It seems that Sumir is also allergic to peanuts! Whenever Sumir ate the peanuts offered by the children who game to the circus, his trunk would get pink and swollen. Just like mine did! Dr. Gupta had been called by the circus owners to take care of Sumir, their most favorite elephant. Dr. Gupta invited the circus people to bring Sumir to our Sanctuary where he would be well cared for and wouldn’t have to worry about coming into contact with anymore peanuts. You can probably guess what happened next. When we began to open our lunches, Sumir and me discovered we both had almond butter sandwiches!

I think almond butter sandwiches are much, much better than peanut butter sandwiches. I forgot to mention, Sumir is really, cute, too.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's a Swamp Box?

Image
One thing you notice as soon as you start driving around Tucson is the many  beige-colored metal boxes  you see sitting on the roofs of houses all over town.   Some look pretty neglected and rusted out.   At first glance, you might mistake them for air conditioning units, and they are, sort of.   They are often referred to as “Swamp Boxes” by the locals.   A Swamp Box is what the heating and cooling industry calls an Evaporative Cooler.   It works much like a home humidifier.   The cooler contains a basin of water and a rotating drum with a foam pad.   Air is blown over the wet pad and into the house to produce cool moist air.   With an A/C unit, humidity is sucked out of the interior air in the cooling process, whereas with a swamp cooler humidity is blown into the interior air.   Since Tucson is a desert climate with very little humidity, for most of the warm season, an A/C unit is of little use.   The locals who have lived with their quirky swamp coolers since the 1960’s, like to
Read more

Desert Fruit

What distinguishes our Tucson home from all the rest in our post-WWII tract-home development are the two stately olive trees that grace our front yard. Our property is the only one in the neighborhood that retains its original curbside olive trees. When our development, and others just like it all over Tucson, were first built, its streets were lined with olive trees.  Over time, the trees died or were chopped down my homeowners who found the trees to be more of a nuisance than a distinctive shade tree.  The city of Tucson has since band the planting of fruit-bearing olive trees anywhere in the city.  Olive trees have a nasty habit of producing tremendous amounts of pollen and dropping huge numbers of olives all over sidewalks and streets. Believe me when I tell you that fallen olives will turn a sidewalk into a slippery purple-black mess. They are so bitter that the birds won't even eat them. People who come to the desert to get relief from their pollen allergies, have little appr
Read more

Figaro - Growing Figs in Tucson

Not long after settling into our new place in Tucson, I discovered a garden center just down the street that specialized in native plants.  Great!  I could now start learning how to identify and name all the local desert flora.  As I browsed the aisles and started noting names on the tags of the most interesting plants, I found my way over to the fruit tree section.  Just beyond the lemons, oranges, and grapefruit trees, I spotted an aisle of trees that looked surprisingly familiar. Could they be? Was it possible?  Was I really seeing rows of fig trees? Yes! They were truly fig trees. I had never expected to find fig trees growing in Tucson.  It was early September, and the figs were just beginning to ripen. Unfortunately, some trees were infested with fig beetles.  Fig beetles are gigantic iridescent purplish black things the size of a cockroach.  When they begin to feast on a fig, they swarm on that one precious fig until they are hanging from it like a bunch of deep purple grapes. 
Read more