An elephant in the woods

Elephants? In Toronto? In winter???

Ryna Applebaum🌹
3 min readFeb 28, 2020
Photo by Roi Dimor on Unsplash

I guess we all need to stop and listen to the elephants once in a while.

“It’s elephants!” she exclaimed. “Can you hear them?”

My thoughts were interrupted, and that phrase caught me off-guard. Elephants? I thought. That’s ridiculous.

I was on my way home when we heard the trumpets. The daycare yard at UTSC was filled with at least 15 tiny children, all no more than four years old. They stopped their shenanigans to hear the loud trumpets coming from the woods.

I slowed down and observed. The naked wooded area behind the daycare sparkled with snow, and meteorologists promised that more snowfall will come in the evening. For a moment, I thought I misheard the teacher.

Elephants? In Toronto? In winter???

Then the trumpets came again.

“Elephants?” a little girl squealed.

She was bewildered with the thought that elephants were so close, that she could hear them. Was she being skeptical, just like I was, that elephants were here? Was she scared that they would attack? I know I would be. The Toronto Zoo was nearby, but if elephants escaped from there, the public would surely be informed. And there…

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Ryna Applebaum🌹

Slowly riding this beautiful life and capturing enigmatic moments in writing (katesedition.com)