The gastronomical elephant

As the color drained from the fields and a white mist gathered, the air filled with low rumbles and the treetops began to sway and thrash. “It’s like a storm coming,” said Dhruba Das, a pensive, chain-smoking thirty-two-year-old specialist in mitigating human-elephant conflict (HEC).

“It’s difficult to prove an elephant’s intelligence,” Dhruba said. “They don’t have a monkeylike intelligence. ‘Intelligence’ isn’t even the right word. It’s more like wisdom. They can sense things. They know what to do. They’ll take whatever a situation offers them and use it to their best advantage. And they don’t aggravate situations. Unlike monkeys.”

Once the elephants began raiding houses, they learned about rice beer, which is fermented in the villages. “They love it,” Dhruba said. “They will do anything for it.” Then they started stealing other foods. “The villagers tell me, ‘Any time we make pork curry, they will come.’ ”