Moji

 

When Moji realized I was out of the bananas I’d been feeding her she gave me what could best be described as a gentle hug with her trunk.

I rubbed her rough cheek and her huge forehead and looked into her heavily lashed eye. I could see a deep intelligence there as we started to walk together toward the open field.

I felt comfortable and safe even though the 60-year-old rescue from a Myanmar logging operation (with the scars to prove it) outweighed me by 8,000 pounds.

As we walked, she turned away from me and, as nonchalantly as I might pick a bacon-wrapped chestnut hors d'oeuvres from a buffet table, she uprooted a small tree with her trunk and stripped the leaves from it with her mouth.

Was it a casual snack or a reminder to me that humans had mistreated her in the past and that she could as easily toss me into the underbrush as I could discard an unwanted Teddy bear?

She was in a sanctuary now. And nobody was going to hurt her ever again. But scars run deep.

Not just for elephants.