The Woolly Mammoth

THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH

Once a woolly mammoth sensed the world was growing warmer.
The change had been going on for some time, as the winds steadily shifted and the glaciers that had seemed to define the limits of the mammoth’s world began to recede. Intent on the constant foraging necessary to sustain its great bulk, however, the mammoth hadn’t looked up long enough to realize what was happening.
When it finally did become aware that the world was not the same as before, the mammoth’s first response was to go into denial. So dramatic a change was definitely suspicious. The conditions to which the mammoth had adapted its every thought and movement over the years couldn’t just vanish like that. It had done so well in its own frozen world, where its overwhelming size and might were enough to silence any opposition by other creatures to its own view of things. Why shouldn’t that state of affairs continue indefinitely?
To the mammoth’s mind, this whole climate change thing was likely merely a temporary aberration. If worse came to worse, it had only to wait for the planet to enter the next ice age for everything to get back to normal again.
But if the new conditions were in fact an aberration, what could possibly be the reason for that? Might there actually be something beyond the laws of nature at work here, the mammoth wondered? Some kind of nefarious hoax? That would certainly make sense of what otherwise couldn’t be squared with its own understanding of the elements.
Then how was one to explain the rising heat level and woolly mammoths’ accelerating loss of hair? No problem: conspiracies, conspiracies, conspiracies everywhere must be the explanation. What else could it be? The average mammoth didn’t need to know much to know that was the truth. The glaciers weren’t really melting. Sea level wasn’t really rising. Everything was fake.
Convinced now that it had the answer to all of its questions, the mammoth waved its big tusks wildly about, trumpeted loudly for all others to follow, and charged pell-mell into the gathering heat.
“Let’s show the world what’s what!”