NEW YORK CITY, NY—The United Nations convened a special emergency session last week to discuss the increasing and immediate threat of invasive species that encroach on local plants and wildlife. Of primary concern was the African Savanna or bush elephant, scientific name Loxodonta africana. The largest land animal, the African elephant has proven to be the most invasive of all species both historically and presently, wiping out troves of flora, devastating whole ecosystems, and bringing about the collapse of entire civilizations in antiquity. In recent years, most member nations have reported sightings, especially at zoos and peanut farms. Several Asian and South American nations have reported destructive famines resulting from the elephants’ booming population and unrestricted activities.
Elephants have been so destructive outside of the 37 African countries where they typically roam for multiple reasons. The massive herbivores require 70,000 calories a day, spending 80% of their time in feeding on grasses, bushes, fruit, twigs, tree bark, roots, and other plants. Outside of their native lands, they wreak havoc in consuming vegetation without restraint, laying waste to forests, farms, gardens, and other sources of nutrients. Furthermore, elephants, long considered a symbol of fertility as well as gluttony, breed like rabbits, spreading rapidly across any non-native biosphere unfortunate enough to harbor them. They also exhibit raging, violent behavior toward most other animal species, impaling with their tusks or tipping over just for sport. In recent years, due to global warming and stowing away on aquatic vessels, the creature has ventured farther from the equator and has spread to all populated or inhabited continents. Environmental scientists and biologists worry that they may even venture to the North Pole and Antarctica by the year 2030.
Additionally, eradicating the pests has always been difficult. Humans have absolutely no use for the creatures with their tough, inedible and gamey flesh and their curved, ivory tusks that lack practical and aesthetic value. Moreover, their tough hides render most conventional weapons useless. Tactical nuclear devices have been proposed but never implemented for fear of potential fallout and the mutation of the giants into worse monsters than they already are. More importantly, whatever tactic or tool is used against the creatures, if there is even a single survivor that method has to be abandoned immediately as elephants never forgive nor forget. Their retaliation against humans is often swift and furious; this is what is known in Latin America as "la tempestad pisoteo" or "the trampling tempest."
Recently unearthed archaeological evidence has suggested that only a unified, concerted effort has worked in similar cases involving the elephant’s distant relatives, the mammoth and mastodon. The evidence indicates that using another animal may be the only method. The elephant’s only known natural predator is the mouse, which will attack in swarms, eating the pachyderm bone dry within an hour. This is one reason why there are few elephants in some mouse-infested areas, such as pet stores and New York City’s streets, and why the relatively small rodents instill fear in the lumbering mammals.