The mammoth is silent, the way an ancient stand of trees are “silent”. They may be “quiet”, but what they can tell us is only a sliver of what they actually know. I’m too curious and I don’t care if I can’t take it all in, so I say, “Hi! How are you? (I’m addressing the literal elephant in the room, and, yes, and I hate myself for typing this.) Out of respect, I am waiting for him to answer and I am listening as hard as I can. It takes a few minutes but he finally says I’m not supposed to see him like this – “reassembled”. He says it’s embarrassing.
Said mammoth is skeletal and looming. He tells me he was exhumed from the Manti-LaSal National Forest in Utah at an elevation of 9,000 feet. (A very high elevation for mammoths!). He “died” around 60 years of age in a bog, with one leg twisting backward through his pelvis hole! Yikes! I hope that’s just the way he settled postmortem. Now he is probably 10,000-ish years old, which makes him much younger (as in mammoths persisted much longer on the continent than scientists previously thought) than other specimens found in North America. (He also sparked a fascinating DNA discovery!!!). He knows I can barely conceptualize that kind of info so he doesn’t bother to get too specific. I stare back at him, my mouth agape waiting for him to go on, but our conversation is shattered by some screaming children being frog-marched out the front door by their very martial parents.
Finally, the museum closes and all the curious children and their maskless asshole parents go home. Over in the next room the cleaning staff and volunteers chat happily to each other with the lightness of closing time their voices; their conversations ripple and snap like sundried sheets as they are plucked from the line. A beautiful Arizona peachy-amber light floods through the side windows. Now we can finally talk…
I say, “Nonsense!” to his shame in reassembled-ness.. “You are magnificent! Despite some of your parts being bridged together with resin and some exposed wiring holding you together here and there, you are breathtaking!”
I always like seeing the wiring! (But then again I’m still impressed with Christmas lights.). I like to see a little of how the work was done – the “humans were here” graffiti, as my friend Brian Connelly so wisely put it.
“Well, that’s true,” he muses. “I AM pretty amazing (even though the tip of my tail is missing!), but you should have SEEN ME! I was at the top of the food chain! I ruled the land! Well, the females did… but I was permitted to MATE WITH THEM! Oh, the calves I’ve sired!” he radiated.
“Ew,” I grimmaced.
“Stop anthopomorpizing me!” he shot back.
Busted. OK.
I like sitting with him and drawing his ribs and vertebrae with a cerulean blue pencil in my notebook. It’s calming. I can serenely tolerate the very uncomfortable bench I'm sitting on as well as the grating sound made by a member of the cleaning staff’s phone alarm going off for 26 solid minutes (though it was almost enough to put me off melody completely). It’s magic just being with him and contemplating his ungodly huge pelvis. It’s the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. He could swallow me whole and shit me out with absolutely no tearing of the softer membranes. I imagined oiling up and strapping the GoPro to my forehead. I laughed aloud. He looked at me with Victorian disgust, but stifled a laugh because he’s not Victorian at all and knows what an excellent and absurd visual that is; him plugging his trunk and gagging some idiot woman down his throat-hole just so she can emerge from his bottom, (triumphant?), 12 or so hours later? (Shit! I’d need a breathing apparatus! I might be getting too bulky to do this humanely).
There is something about joking around with the ancient world in real time that seems so appropriate and impossible; “Just like our time?” (Yes, I did just puke at my own sentence! Man, am I sick of thinking about that.. It’s the cliche that keeps on killing.) But what are the odds of us being in this room together now!? I’m just not cool enough to act like it’s an everyday thing! The backhoe operator who found him could have pretended he didn’t notice the giant femur in his steel claw! He had to weigh the possibility of completely halting some stupid, extractive, multi-million dollar construction project for an indeterminate amount of time and money if he called the Utah paleontologists. Luckily, his better nature overruled and he called! (Thank you, Chris Nielson).
I ask the mammoth about his contemporary species in the Cenozoic Era (like us!), Quaternary Period, Pleistocene Epoch not ogled by the masses due to their ordinary-ish size and lack of “Jurassic Park” appeal, like tiny horses and humpless camels, bobcats, birds, canids and tortoises. “Everyone was unique and incredible,'' he sighs. “Particular, gorgeous specialists all… they just didn’t make it… like I didn’t make it.” He frowns across his massive, shadowed forehead. “I’m only here because of my size (well, and my magnificence).” The general populous doesn't care for seemingly tiny specialities! They are all about gnashing teeth, being HUGE and Shark Week. They want monsters!
“It’s kinda like music.” I say.
He looks at me like I’m a fucking idiot, “Really. How’s that?”
So I tell him, “People want to be the first to show the world the “monsters”, to own the monsters even. So it’s nearly impossible to know how monsters live when they don't get to say for themselves (or if no one bothered to listen to them). They want the monsters to live on keychains. It may be all lasers and satellites now but it’s still a conman’s game; it’s still about the fucking keychain.”
“Our existence overlapped you know,” comes from a voice from behind me. I turn with great agitation. It’s the mastodon.
“Who the fuck are are you, Legs McNeil?! I’m talking to the mammoth here… Jesus…”
I continue, annoyed and important, “It feels like we just make museums now. If we were able to live, experience and represent for that living of which the mythology is made, where would the mystery be, right? It’s like your Pleistocene friends, they were intricate and amazing, sure! But who cares!? Without the oversized, extreeeeeeme reputations of the T.rex and Velociraptor no money can be made by the conman, and no one feels like they got a real “thrill” I guess?” My metaphor peeters out because it’s weak but I know what I mean and I feel like the mammoth does too? “You know… the conman wants the “fully formed” monster, he doesn’t want to put money back IN to the monster. Only “self-made” monsters who thrill without need of recompense or recording expenses need apply?” I pause, waiting for some sign of solidarity.
“I’m not a dinosaur,” he says with a black one-ton wrecking ball of a period punctuating his statement.
“I know you’re not..” I start to protest, but then I’m sucker-punched by some stray, boomerang of guilt which turns me abruptly to the mastodon, “I’m sorry, that “Legs McNeil” comment was way below the belt.”
“It’s fine,” he says.
But I know it’s not. I’m an asshole. I’m just so tired suddenly.
I look back to the mammoth.
“I can see why you’re going extinct,” he quips.
And with that lazy rebuff, I climb his tree-like leg bones up into his ribs and lay down across them. They are far less comfortable than the bench I was sitting on, but I live there now. Right where his heart would have been. I’m gonna try to make it up to the mastodon tomorrow.
Note: People don’t often click on the links in these posts, but the ones provided here are SO INTERESTING! Especially the report on the Huntington Mountain Mammoth by David D. Gillette PH.D. These articles are not easy to find either, as museums often have trouble getting funding to make their websites REALLY helpful and user-friendly when interested patrons are trying to learn more about their exhibits from home. A big thanks to my friend and regal paleontologist, Gavin McCullough for giving me these links and making it possible to hang out “backstage” with my mammoth and mastodon friends.
P.s. I know that neither Mammoth OR Mastodons are dinosaurs, I was being facetious. Back away from the keyboard, sado-correctors.
You know, I've had many years to get used to your intricate and challenging genius in songwriting and performing. I'm accustomed to how interesting you are in interviews, and I'm privileged to be familiar with how awesome you are in live shows.
So there is an especial delight in this unfolding discovery of how wonderful, idiosyncratic, passionate, and captivating your prose writing is! This newsletter is a gift, it makes me so happy.
Aaaagh, this is so fucking cool! Thank you for sharing the links, I loved reading about the discovery. Thank you for sharing the museum conversation, as well - it takes me back to working in the KU Natural History Museum (I was the live venomous snake exhibit caretaker) and hanging out backstage behind the exhibits while watching my friend Greg repair the specimen-folk. Man...I miss my danger noodles.