Elvis the Elephant

"A lot of anxiety and depression disorders we see in the world today are actually an undiagnosed homesickness for a sense of belonging."

                       Boyd Varty


On this morning's Ted Radio Hour, (link below), I heard one of the most amazing stories and artfully told stories by a young man who grew up on a nature preserve in South Africa.

He tells about a female elephant named Elvis the Pelvis, so named by humans because she was born with a deformity that made her walk in erratic ways that reminded them of Elvis.

One of the things Boyd Varty discovered in observing nature for hours and hours every day is that animals are capable of caring for each other in profound ways.  Elvis' herd actually slowed down to accommodate the slow movements and difficulties of Elvis and when she fell trying to climb a difficult bank, one of the teenaged elephants in the herd would prop his trunk beneath her and help her up the bank!

This segment of today's program (the middle segment) is a powerful one, a reminder--as Boyd Varty says--that all sentient beings on the planet are connected and that it is in the "cathedral of the wild" that we learn more about and experience our deepest humanity.