Donkey vs. Elephant

In mortal conflict between a Donkey and an Elephant, the Elephant would have the definite advantage. Think about it: Elephants have the weight advantage, weighing up to around 15,000 pounds; their tusks, formidable weapons, can weigh up to 100 pounds each; they can be 13 feet tall at the shoulder and 25 feet long front to back; their skin is the thickest skin of all land mammals (aside from maybe the rhino), one of the most effective suits of natural armor in the animal kingdom; they can charge something that pisses them off, accellerating their bulk to 25 mph; they have the grace to move silently through the forest without making their presence known to much smaller creatures, navigating subtly and almost invisibly through the most complex and dense environments; and they are so powerful that they have been known to crush an adult man TO DEATH with just the weight of their HEADS! But they can't jump, which Donkeys can do, which is about the only thing a Donkey can do that an Elephant can't.

The biggest advantage that the Elephant has over the Donkey, however, is organization. Elephants stay organized as a central group, and they doggedly work as a block to stay within the boundaries of the family unit. There is, of course, the rare Bull Elephant that goes off on its own and strays from the rest of the party, but without the physical and social protection of working within the boundaries of the family it often finds itself shot to death when it runs into trouble in the real world where the family can't come to its defense. Donkeys are ornary, contentious, obstinate, stubborn, and unwilling to go along with their fellows when they get in their mind to stay still or go off in another direction. The most famous Democrat of all time, Will Rogers, once stated "I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat." Truer words were never spoken, and they could have just as easily have been said about Donkeys.

But Elephants are endangered, and Donkeys are not. Why is that so? Despite all of the advantages that the Elephant has over the Donkey, the position of the Elephant is not economically feasable. An Elephant needs to drink between thirty and fifty gallons of water a day, in addition to eating 200 pounds of food to sustain their enormous bulk. (I know this for a fact. I looked it up on the internet, so it has to be true.) They constantly come into conflict with ordinary human beings, competing with their interests in order to fill their insatiable apetites. They have, in fact, been known to destroy the very crops that the common man needs to survive in an effort to pad their already overly volumenous hides, and when they can't support a diet that supports a bulk 100 times that of the average man they can go insane with rage and greed. They require thousands of acres of land on which to support their lush lifestyle, while your average human being can live in a one bedroom flat in Queens (in a building with 800 other one bedroom flats). Donkeys can live in an 8 by 10 pen eating nothing but old shirts and leftovers.

For all of their advantages, Elephants are a dying breed. Unless Elephants learn to live in harmony rather than in conflict with human beings, their demise is inevitable, and all we will end up having left are Donkeys. When we lose the strength, the power, the majesty, the subtlety, and the wisdom of the Elephants, our world will just be left with the ornery, contentious, obnoxious, stubborn, short sighted Donkeys.

But at least the Donkeys will be working with, and for, the people.