The Elephant of Surprise

The trouble with elephants is that they seldom arrive when you expect them. Or, at least, that’s what I gathered from the peculiar incident that transpired one balmy July morning in the town of Muddy Creek—a place so remote and unspectacular that an elephant in any capacity would be considered nothing short of a miracle.

Now, to set the stage, it was on the second day of the county fair. The mayor, Mr. Hiram P. Tuttle, had announced that this year’s main attraction would be none other than an elephant—something that none of us had ever seen outside the confines of a geography book or heard tell of in the unreliable recollections of Uncle Buford, who once claimed to have fought a circus elephant to a draw in a poker game.

The announcement alone stirred up quite the buzz. Mrs. Beasley, bless her soul, declared it was an omen and took to wearing her good church hat all week in preparation for the spectacle. Ol’ Jenkins, the town barber, swore off shaving anyone who doubted the elephant’s existence, which meant Muddy Creek spent the better part of a week looking like a frontier town overrun with mountain men.

But no one was more eager to see the elephant than young Billy Turner, who had a wild imagination that could make a thunderstorm out of a drizzle. He was the sort of boy who thought finding a penny was as exciting as striking gold and could make a simple mud puddle into the Mississippi River. The promise of an elephant had Billy hopping around town like a flea on a hot skillet.

The day finally arrived. The whole town gathered at the fairgrounds—hot dogs in hand, lemonade flowing, and anticipation so thick you could cut it with a butter knife. We waited. And waited. The band played, the sun set, and the mayor nervously adjusted his bow tie for the seventh time when finally, out of nowhere, a great bellowing trumpet rang out.

The townsfolk gasped. Mrs. Beasley clutched her hat. Billy’s eyes nearly popped clean out of his head. A trumpet, indeed—but not from an elephant. It was none other than Jasper Longfellow, the town drunk, tooting a rusted bugle he’d unearthed from somewhere deep in the bowels of his barn. He stood atop a rickety cart with his eyes half-crossed and declared, “Behold! The beast cometh!”

Now, if you ever saw Jasper’s cart, you’d know it was more suited to hauling hay than housing an elephant, but sure enough, there it was—an enormous canvas covering something large, lumpy, and vaguely elephant-shaped. The townsfolk leaned in, holding their collective breath. The mayor stepped forward with a grand flourish.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed, “I present to you, straight from the exotic lands of Africa—our ELEPHANT!”

Jasper yanked the canvas away.

There, standing tall as a mountain but infinitely more perplexed, was not an elephant, but a cow—Old Bessie, to be precise, borrowed without permission from Farmer McGee. Her skin was painted gray (not very well, I might add), and two broomsticks, lashed together and tied to her head, drooped sadly in an effort to pass as tusks. A rope tied around her midsection was affixed to a long hose, which dangled like a sad attempt at a trunk.

The crowd was silent for a good long moment, digesting this most peculiar sight. Finally, Mrs. Beasley fainted clean away into the lemonade stand. Billy Turner, meanwhile, burst into the most delighted laughter you’ve ever heard. He laughed so hard that he nearly toppled over, and soon the whole town joined him, the absurdity of it all too much to resist.

The mayor, for his part, stood there with his face the color of a boiled beet, trying to maintain his dignity. “Ahem,” he said, clearing his throat, “It seems… there has been a misunderstanding.”

“I’ll say!” hollered Farmer McGee, who had been steadily advancing upon his repainted cow with a look that could only be described as murderous. “If y’all don’t get my Bessie outta that paint and them tusks, I’ll be havin’ words with every one of you!”

Jasper, in his usual state of intoxicated indifference, merely tipped his hat and remarked, “She’s a mighty fine elephant if you squint just right.”

But the highlight of the day came when Billy Turner, still in the throes of laughter, shouted, “It’s an elephant of surprise!”

The name stuck. From that day forward, whenever something wholly unexpected happened, the folks of Muddy Creek would say it was “an elephant of surprise.” It didn’t matter whether it was a failed barn-raising, a flooded creek, or even the time Mrs. Tuttle won the pie-baking contest with store-bought crust. Every mishap or marvel, great or small, was declared to be “just another elephant of surprise.”

As for Old Bessie, she was never quite the same after the incident. She took to wandering about with an air of regal indifference, as if she’d truly been elevated to elephant status in her own mind. Farmer McGee was none too pleased, but the townsfolk insisted that she be treated with the respect due to such a rare and exotic creature.

The next year’s fair featured no mention of elephants, or any other large mammals, for that matter. But even now, when the folks of Muddy Creek gather around to reminisce, someone will inevitably bring up that fateful day of the county fair, and the legend of the Elephant of Surprise continues to grow bigger with each telling.

And in truth, I reckon that was the best surprise of all.