Personal Essay: On Eating Elephants
On Eating Elephants
When I was younger, I compared my grandfather to that of an elephant, 13 feet tall, 15,400 pounds, and a heart weighing up to 46 pounds. A big, broad, vulnerable creature, towering over the rest of the family. Ten months of hairy cell leukemia, a rare strand of the already rare strand of chronic lymphotic leukemia claiming his body made him so small, just skin and bones. My best friend sat 205 miles away over Skype and asked: “How do you get rid of an elephant in a room?” I imagined an elephant squeezing itself like a balloon into my nine-foot-tall living room. “You have to eat it,” she said, “Do you know how eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
. The phrase: “When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time,” was first spoken by the former US Army chief of staff, Creighton William Abrams, Jr. This was a man famous for aggressive and effective tactics as a tank commander in World War II. During the war, his …show more content…
In the last few centuries, occasional explorers would receive the delicacy of elephant foot from African tribes. They would prepare the choice, white meat, typically by boiling it. To prevent sunburns and bugs, elephants douse themselves with protective layers of dust and sand, and they walk hundreds of miles to satisfy their daily needs for food. Yet the dish of elephant foot is served as a delicacy in some cultures. In 1790, the explorer Francois Le Vaillant found his breakfast of elephant food delicious. Paul du Chaillu, in 1859, thought the meal was tasteless and dry, though he explained that the foot was the best piece. Dr. David Livingstone ate elephant foot porridge. An elephant foot alone could feed 50 men, and an entire elephant could feed 200 people for over a month. There lies the solution to world hunger. There also lies a daunting problem for me to stomach -- roughly 10,000 pounds taken one bite at a
When I was younger, I compared my grandfather to that of an elephant, 13 feet tall, 15,400 pounds, and a heart weighing up to 46 pounds. A big, broad, vulnerable creature, towering over the rest of the family. Ten months of hairy cell leukemia, a rare strand of the already rare strand of chronic lymphotic leukemia claiming his body made him so small, just skin and bones. My best friend sat 205 miles away over Skype and asked: “How do you get rid of an elephant in a room?” I imagined an elephant squeezing itself like a balloon into my nine-foot-tall living room. “You have to eat it,” she said, “Do you know how eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
. The phrase: “When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time,” was first spoken by the former US Army chief of staff, Creighton William Abrams, Jr. This was a man famous for aggressive and effective tactics as a tank commander in World War II. During the war, his …show more content…
In the last few centuries, occasional explorers would receive the delicacy of elephant foot from African tribes. They would prepare the choice, white meat, typically by boiling it. To prevent sunburns and bugs, elephants douse themselves with protective layers of dust and sand, and they walk hundreds of miles to satisfy their daily needs for food. Yet the dish of elephant foot is served as a delicacy in some cultures. In 1790, the explorer Francois Le Vaillant found his breakfast of elephant food delicious. Paul du Chaillu, in 1859, thought the meal was tasteless and dry, though he explained that the foot was the best piece. Dr. David Livingstone ate elephant foot porridge. An elephant foot alone could feed 50 men, and an entire elephant could feed 200 people for over a month. There lies the solution to world hunger. There also lies a daunting problem for me to stomach -- roughly 10,000 pounds taken one bite at a