When I first told my family about the man-eating baby elephant in my closet, they didn’t believe me.


“No, really,” I’d claimed. “There’s an elephant in my closet, and he wants to eat all of us.”

They thought I was crazy. But I knew that I was not. Every night at exactly nine o’ clock, the elephant would start to make itself known by pounding loudly on the door with its trunk. I would jump at first, wondering what the noise could possibly be, before remembering the elephant and going to fetch my defense supplies. This included a large water hose, a jar of mustard, and a hand mixer. My mother would give me strange looks when I hauled these things upstairs, but I didn’t bother explaining it to her.

By the time I returned, the closet door would be open. The elephant sat in the middle of the floor, giving off the impression that he was sniffing the carpet but I suspected he was really plotting the downfall of all humanity. I would close the door, the elephant would look up, and that’s where the real fun would start.

I would first blast the elephant in the face with the water hose to distract it, soaking everything nearby in the process. The elephant would jump up, causing the floor to shake, and charge towards me, clearly intent on satisfying his craving for human flesh. I would uncap the mustard bottle and squirt mustard directly into his eye. The elephant would stumble backwards with an inhuman shriek, and I would toss away the mustard quickly. While the elephant attempted to recover from the mustard attack, I would plug the hand mixer into the nearest outlet and turn it on, advancing towards the elephant with spinning metal whisks of doom. This was usually enough to scare him back into the closet—at least until tomorrow.


I had no idea where this animal came from, or how it got to be in my closet, but I knew that I definitely didn’t want it there. After attempting to gain assistance from my family and failing—miserably, I might add—I decided to take things to the next level. Surely the nearest Animal Control office would understand the gravity of the situation. I mean, I had a perilously malicious elephant in my closet, for crying out loud! I contacted the Animal Control office and explained my problem. After a lengthy, forty-five minute phone call that involved lots of hysterics on my part, they agreed to send someone down to check it out.


The next day, I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the person who would get this elephant away from me. When the doorbell rang, I vaulted downstairs and all but dragged the confused-looking Animal Control officer up to my room. She took one look in the closet and looked at me, terrified.


“You’ve got an elephant in your closet,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I realize that. Can you do something about it?”


The woman had to go back to her car to call for backup. I was waiting for her to return, glaring malevolently at the closet door, when I heard it. The elephant was wailing. Somehow, it had acquired magnificent hearing skills and picked up on the fact that it was going to be evacuated.

Suddenly, the entire room began to vibrate. My TV fell over, along with the two bookcases in my room. Plaster was raining down from the ceiling. Then the elephant burst the door, and I jumped back to avoid it. It charged straight ahead towards the window, crashing through the wall and leaving a large hole. I stood there, stunned, while footsteps sounded on the stairs. My mother and the Animal Control lady came running, assessing the damage with horrified looks on their faces.


“My god…so you really did have an elephant in your closet,” my mother said.


“Obviously, why else would there be an elephant-shaped hole in the side of the house?”


My mother laughed slightly, one of those I’m-only-laughing-to-stave-off-the-impending-insanity laughs. The Animal Control officer went back to her car to radio ahead to her co-workers and to tell them to be on the lookout for a dangerous elephant frolicking through the streets.


The cost to rebuild would have been astronomical, so I opted to simply cover the hole with glass instead. And that’s how I ended up with a funky window in my room.