Sans Chocolat

In March, 2007 I had a date with the Elephant Sanctuary. I applied for an internship, and was first granted a phone interview. It was standard, as phone interviews go. I don’t have the background (English major, Women’s Studies minor, 3 months of experience at an animal shelter) of the typical intern applying for an internship at a sanctuary, so I worked extra hard to impress the interviewer with my want to learn about elephants as a matriarchal society, and the skills I picked up working at the Humane Society.

All seemed to be going well. The interviewer was impressed enough to grant me a “work-day interview,” and I planned for a trip to Tennessee. Seth and I decided to drive — two days down, one day scooping elephant poop, two days back. If we went over a weekend, we only had to take three days off of work each. That’s not so bad, considering the opportunity at stake. After some finagling with an office person at the Sanctuary, we arranged a Friday interview where I would work all day and then have an interview with Carol Buckley, Sanctuary founder, at the end of the day. So far, par for the course; as they mention on the website, this is the type of interview their first caretaker had.

All right, I could go with it. Two days of driving left me with two massive migraines, cramped legs and sketchy motel rooms. Hohenwald, Tennessee isn’t exactly known for their five-star hotels, but we were comfortable enough.  (Quick note: The Elephant Sanctuary offered me a bed in one of the intern cabins on their property so that I wouldn’t have to pay for lodging.  I didn’t feel comfortable driving 16 hours by myself to Tennessee, and they were hesitant to let Seth also stay in the intern cabin.  I can’t remember if they decided yes or no on it, but at any rate, Seth and I figured we would just rent a few cheap hotels.)

My work day started bright and early — I think 8:00 a.m. I didn’t want to leave Seth in Hohenwald (the town with one stoplight) without a car all day, so we thought we’d drop me off at the Elephant Sanctuary gates in the morning and then find out what time I’d be done so he could just come by and pick me up. At the gates, we found a small telecom system with instructions to press the button and wait to talk to someone. I pressed the button.

And waited. And waited some more. And pressed the button again. Finally, someone answered. She didn’t seem to realize that there was an intern coming in for the day, because she had to go away to talk to someone and then come back.

“Okay, just drive your car up and to the left, and park in front of the barn,” she said.

“I’m actually carpooling, ” I responded to the little box. “Do you still want me to drive in?”

The person on the other end was silent for several minutes. Then she said, “No, someone will be down to pick you up.”

I loitered by the car for the next five minutes, until a girl walked down to the gate and greeted me. “I uh… I don’t know how to get the gate open. Huh. Usually, it opens by itself,” she said. “I’m new here. I’ll be right back,” and she walked away.

Odd. Another five or ten minutes passed, and a different girl drove down on a 4-wheeler. She looked tough, and I was intimidated — especially since I had to hold on to her so I wouldn’t get thrown from the 4-wheeler as she drove me up to the Quarantine barn. She didn’t talk.

When we got to the barn, the 4-wheeler-girl (let’s call her Julia) set me to chopping up vegetables and fruit for the elephants’ snacks. Through a large freight-type door, I saw two elephants in the barn, swaying and eating their breakfasts. They were huge. I mean, I thought I understood how big elephants were, but these girls were HUGE. I’m talking the size of a UPS delivery truck. Yeah — picture standing next to two moving, breathing UPS trucks that have been ripped from their natural habitats and abused for half their lives and could react to some unknown stimulus with PTSD symptoms and end up crushing you without thinking. That’s how big they were, and I wasn’t even in the same room.

While I finished chopping the elephants’ snacks and started mixing their grains for their next meal, the girls left the barn and headed outside, and I learned that Julia was in charge of the Quarantine barn. The elephants who lived there had been exposed to tuberculosis, and while they hadn’t shown any symptoms in a while, humans in the barn wore face masks as an extra precaution.

I met Scott — one of the founders of the Elephant Sanctuary, a couple more workers, and (surprise!) a group of volunteers from a college on spring break who started asking me questions as if I worked there.

Julia got the volunteers straightened out, and the new girl showed me how to scoop massive elephant poop onto the poop train that dumped it into the manure spreader. Then I pressure-washed the barn walls and floor and “polished” the floor with the pressure-washer. Now, the new girl (let’s call her Sam) had explained several times how the pressure-washer was dangerous and could remove your skin if you got in the way of the water — and not only that, but the clinic in Hohenwald tried to treat the last person that happened to with a tetanus shot. So the lesson was: don’t get in the way of the pressure washer, and don’t lose control of it. Yes, ma’am!

I lost control of it. After I was done, I was supposed to latch the pressure-washer into a specific point in the fencing in the barn, but it got loose and started flailing around wildly. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t been alone in the barn, I would have been sent home immediately — but I was alone. It took me about 10 agonizing seconds to stomp on the hose. None of my skin came off, thank goodness, and no one noticed unless they were watching the surveillance cameras. At any rate, no one said anything to me about it.

At this point, it was lunch time. I was starving. Another worker (Casey?), said I could have lunch. I asked her if I would be able to see the elephants at all.

“Well, I could take you upstairs to the office,” she said, but she looked doubtful. I had already gotten on her bad side earlier by asking if she ever stood next to the elephants. I think she thought I wanted to do that (which I did, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I just wanted to know what if felt like).

“If you don’t think you should, then don’t even worry about it,” I said. “I’ll sit outside.”

But Casey led me up to the second-floor deck instead, where I could watch the elephants from afar. One of the dogs followed me, and I took my hour lunch in the Tennessee March sun, alone with the company of a stray dog the Sanctuary adopted, who tried to steal my turkey sandwich, watching the elephants swing their trunks and graze. It was the most peaceful lunch I had in a while.

After my lunch hour was up, I searched for Julia, who was nowhere to be found. Casey took pity on me and recruited me into her service cleaning the poop track and the area around the manure spreader. I tried to make conversation, but she wasn’t that interested, and she eventually went to work on something else. I cleaned and cleaned, and then when everything was clean, I cleaned some more, and Casey still hadn’t returned.

I heard her voice in the barn and followed it. She was talking to the group of volunteers, who were repainting the inside walls of the barn while the elephants were out. I waited patiently on the side for her to finish so I could ask what to do next.

And then it happened. Carol Buckley, the Sanctuary founder, hurried into the barn. She was the one I needed to impress, but I was already on her bad side. “What are you doing?” She asked me in an agitated way.

“Waiting for Casey,” I said, “I….”

“You shouldn’t be standing around! There’s always something to do. Grab a brush. Excuse me!” she raised her voice to the painters across the barn. “Half those volunteers need to come with me! And less talking. You should be quiet so you don’t disturb the elephants. This is not a time for socializing!”

I noticed Casey became quiet and downcast when Carol started speaking. Even though she was directing the volunteers, she gestured for half of them to follow Carol, who had now recruited Julia to take charge of the volunteers she had commandeered.

“Julia will take you to do some more painting,” Carol said, and then walked away without a second glance. Looks like she didn’t know about my interview either.

Julia led us down the barn road to the main elephant gate, and we started painting over the rusted and worn away spots. While we worked, we talked. It was the last day of spring break for these volunteers, and they had been painting all week — although they had been given a tour and seen the elephants at one point.

We ran out of paint, headed back up to the barn, and then I said goodbye to the volunteers, who were done for the day. It was time to get everything ready for the elephants who wanted to spend the night in the barn. Everyone pitched in: Julia, Casey, Sam and Me. We squeegeed and towel-dried the barn floor, hauled in bales of hay, spread the hay out, got the girls’ toys ready, and picked up stray pieces of hay outside the barn.

Carol Buckley wandered in at some point with one of the office workers by her side. They made a beeline towards me. “Hi, I’m Carol Buckley. I thought you were a volunteer,” Carol said as we shook hands. “I just hate to see people standing around, you know? There’s always work to be done around here. How do you like it here? Okay, well, I’m taking off early. Nice to meet you!”

She took off for her house (a small residence just across the way from the Quarantine barn) without waiting for me to say anything, let alone question her about how she was going to interview me if she went home early. I probably should’ve spoken up here, and raised a ruckus about how I spent two days driving to Tennessee and she couldn’t give me the time of day? but I didn’t. You know, I didn’t want to ruin my chances for the internship or anything. Oh well.

At this point, something unusual happened.

Three of the elephants decided it would be a great time to play in the small pond right by the Quarantine barn. They trumpeted and splashed and pulled branches off of the trees, not 50 feet from where I was standing. In fact, the three caregivers also stood and watched them, and commented in low tones how unusual it was for them to hang around the barn all day. The someone muttered how it wouldn’t be good if Carol happened to see us just watching them, and sent Sam and me to cut stalks of bamboo for the girls to eat later.

Sam drove us to the bamboo patch in an ancient pickup truck, handed me a machete, and we started cutting — four stalks per elephant, and try not to cut the bamboo if it’s less than 1.5 inches in diameter.

When we arrived back at the barn, Casey told me I could take off. I explained how I was supposed to have an interview with Carol.

“I doubt she’s coming back,” Casey said. “She must have forgotten.” She took me to a small office area in the corner of the barn preparation area and I gave Casey the times and dates I would be available for a phone interview. “You drove here?” Casey seemed incredulous. I like to think it was indignation on my behalf for Carol completely ignoring me and forgetting my interview after I spent two days just to get here, but I really don’t know. I was certainly indignant — but I gave her my information, and she promised to have Carol call me.

The caregivers didn’t know what to do with me, since I couldn’t go home until Seth came to pick me up, and I couldn’t call him since we didn’t have cell phones at the time and I didn’t know our hotel phone number. So I helped the caregivers rake the area behind the barn, sort of like an open hallway where the elephant door is to the barn. Two elephants stood at the opposite end and watched impatiently. Once again, the caregivers commented how unusual it was for the girls to wait like this, and I fully enjoyed watching them wave their trunks and squeak and grumble at us.

Just when I was relaxing into the routine of raking, Seth drove up to the front gate. Casey drove me down to the gate in the truck, and I asked what she thought my chances were at getting in.

“You know, I really don’t know. I think you have as good a chance as anyone. But all I can tell you is to be yourself during the interview, and relax and answer her questions,” she gave me an encouraging smile and said, “Hopefully we’ll see you at the end of the summer. Good luck!”

Seth and I made it home without any mishap, and a few days later, Carol Buckley called. Our interview was short, and she apologized for skipping out on my workday interview. If she hadn’t apologized, I probably would have blown my top. I was very angry. It seemed obvious that she didn’t care about my workday and wasn’t going to give me the internship, especially since she seemed to write me off once she realized I was an English major. I think that if we had sat down to talk on the day that I was in Tennessee, things would have been different, but that might be my own bias.  I also wonder about the fact that I didn’t stay in one of their intern cabins.  I imagine that’s also part of the interview process — asking the other staff what they think about the prospective interns and their impressions, but not mentioning this as part of the interview process because who wants to be scrutinized when they sleep?  I’m just speculating here.

At any rate, I’ve cooled off by now, for the most part. I didn’t get the internship, obviously, and I realize that Carol has done a fantastic job in getting the Elephant Sanctuary started and keeping it going for all these years. It takes all kinds to run things.

[I changed most of the names in this article, except for the names of the founders because they post their names everywhere on the Elephant Sanctuary website.]