Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Ant and the Elephant

PARENTAL ADVISORY: This post contains naughty language and inappropriate situations. It is not suitable for a family blogsite. Fortunately, you are not reading a family blogsite.



Once upon a time, a small ant was walking along a forest path in deepest, darkest Africa. The ant was searching for a new colony to join, because his fellow ants at the colony where he was born had kicked him out the day before. The ant was in a foul and fractious mood.

It seems that our diminutive hero had developed a reputation for arrogance, conceit, and self-confidence all out of proportion to the meager contributions he made to his colony's welfare. He irritated all and sundry with repeated demands for honors, special treatment, and extra rations based upon his inflated sense of self worth. The ant's conceit and arrogance were only matched by the disdain he heaped upon the other, "inferior" ants in the colony, who suffered from the apparently unpardonable sin that they were not him.

The last straw for the colony elders came the day he claimed credit for a brief rain shower which brought welcome relief to the drought-parched surroundings. The elders were unmoved by his increasingly strident assertions that he alone had summoned the shower by doing a particularly energetic and skillful waggle dance. They knew, of course, that rain only fell when the Great Anteater in the sky relieved himself. They escorted him out of the colony that very evening.

The next day, as the ant stumbled blindly along the woodland path, bemoaning his fate and cursing the shortsightedness and stupidity of the elders who had been too moronic to see just how special and deserving he was, he was brought up short by a strange sound.

Looking up, he was surprised to see a large female elephant sitting smack dab in the middle of the path, blubbering inconsolably and waving one of her front feet around. The ant stopped in a huff.

"Look. Do you mind moving out of the way?," he snapped. "I am a very important ant, and I am in quite a hurry to get down this path."

"Oh please, Mr. Ant," begged the elephant, "please can you help me? I stepped on a tiny thorn a ways back, and it has worked its way into my foot. It is too small for me to see or get out, but it is simply killing me. I just can't walk any farther. Do you think you could take it out for me?"

The ant was unmoved. "I'm sorry, but I just don't have the time. I must ask you to move aside."

"Oh please, please, kind ant," the elephant pleaded, "I am sure you could take it out in no time. There," she indicated where the thorn was embedded, "you see? It would be no trouble for you at all. I would be so grateful."

"Oh you would, would you?," mused the ant, calculating to himself. "Just how grateful? How would you pay me back?"

"I would do anything for you, anything at all," she averred.

"Anything?"

"Yes, absolutely anything!"

"Okay," smiled the ant, "I want to fuck you in the ass."

"What?!," exclaimed the elephant.

"I want to fuck you in the ass."

"You're kidding me, right?," said the elephant. "That's a joke."

"No, I am absolutely serious. If you want me to help take that thorn out of your foot, a difficult and dirty job which will seriously inconvenience me and entail an unconscionable delay to my exceedingly important errand, then I expect to fuck you in the ass. Take it or leave it."

The elephant peered at the tiny ant, whose miniscule thorax was puffed up with self-importance, and back at her swollen, throbbing foot. "Oh, alright," she sighed, "do whatever you want. Just take out the damn thorn."

The ant laid down his little rucksack with a pleased expression on his face, and set to work removing the thorn. It was indeed a difficult and dirty job, but the ant worked diligently and eventually removed it. The elephant shuddered with relief and stood up to test her weight on the wounded foot.

"Okay," said the Ant, wiping his hands on a nearby leaf, "bend over."

"What?," asked the elephant.

"Bend over. I'm going to fuck you in the ass now."

"Oh, right," sighed the elephant. "Well, go ahead and climb on up there, Lothario. Just get it over with."

"I have to warn you," the ant announced smugly as he climbed the elephant's rear leg toward his destination, "that I am known among my own people as an exceptionally well-endowed ant. I fear that you will not find the sensation pleasant," he leered.

"Whatever," the elephant replied, as she peered at the tiny speck crawling up her leg. "Give it your best shot, big guy."

The ant placed himself in position and started banging away, encouraging himself with cries of "Go, Ant! Go, Ant!," and occasional taunts to the elephant to ask her how it felt to be dominated by such a puissant lover. The elephant, who could not feel a thing, ignored the ant and busied herself by considering where she would eat on her way back home.

Meanwhile, up in the forest canopy, a solitary monkey had silently witnessed this entire scene. Dumbfounded amusement had gradually led to helpless hilarity, and the monkey struggled to contain his laughter at the ludicrous scene below. As he writhed and twisted with silent guffaws, the monkey dislodged a large seed pod he had collected in the branches, and the heavy pod came tumbling down onto the unsuspecting elephant's head.

"Ow!," exclaimed the startled elephant. "That really hurt!"

"Yeah!," screamed the ant, in the extremity of his passion. "Take it, bitch!!"

* * *

Later, no amount of exasperated explanation from the elephant or strangled giggling from the helpless monkey could convince the ant that he himself had not caused the elephant's discomfort through his own exertions.

The incident had an unsurprisingly salutary effect on the ant's self regard, and it imbued him with such self-confidence and such a compelling story to tell that he was promptly crowned king of the next ant colony he encountered. After a long and lucrative career as a tyrant, the ant lived very comfortably in retirement on the speaking fees and book deals he was able to garner on the basis of his adventures. Later, the ant embellished his rather slender repertoire by doling out opinions on pachyderm podiatry, interspecies sex, gravitational acceleration of seed pods from the forest canopy, and other topics which a neutral observer might expect him to know little about.

The elephant, who might have told a different story to interested listeners, sadly fell into a poacher's trap a week after the incident and was butchered for her ivory.

The monkey, who could have corroborated the elephant's story, choked to death a month later on another seed pod in the middle of a fit of laughter brought on by remembrance of the story.

The ant, however, lived happily ever after, to universal admiration and acclaim.

* * *

MORAL: Never underestimate the ability of a self-absorbed egomaniac to make a career out of a couple of lucky breaks. (Especially if he is willing to fuck a few people in the ass.)

COROLLARY: There is no justice in the world.


DISCLAIMER: No ants, elephants, monkeys, or seed pods were harmed in the writing of this parable. Resemblance to any characters or situations living or dead is purely unintentional and entirely coincidental. The author of this parable disclaims any and all responsibility for these words, and maintains steadfastly that it was not he who mailed Jack Welch that parcel full of monkey poop a week ago Thursday. Hyperlinks which may or may not be embedded in this article are entirely the result of random computer error. The reader is encouraged to draw his or her own conclusions.

© 2009 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.