My mom was the one who told me about the herd of elephants walking across the country. She just dropped it into the conversation, kind of a throwaway, a distraction from the other things she was saying (Has your ex gotten remarried? Are you still at that job? Haven’t you been promoted yet? And so forth).

Elephants, I said, no shit. Language, my mom said. I rolled my eyes. I know you’re rolling your eyes, said my mom, which momentarily scared the crap out of me, since we were talking on the phone, me in Boston, her in Florida. Am not, I said, but I stopped rolling my eyes.

It’s a medium-sized herd, my mom said. How many elephants in a medium-sized herd, I said, trying to sound like I cared. Well, that’s about one-hundred elephants, my mom responded with some confidence.

How come I never heard of this before now, I said, and then I said, see what I did there? No, Melinda, I do not quote-unquote see what you did there, said my mom. You know, I said, how come I never heard of it? Ridiculous, my mom said.

Anyway, she also said, this has been going on for weeks now, I can’t believe you didn’t notice, you usually seem so up to date on everything that’s going on. I’ve been kind of busy, I said.

While we were talking, I was looking up online how big an elephant herd is. So, at this point, I was able to say, well, one-hundred elephants is a pretty big herd with confidence that I hoped matched hers. Yes, that’s what I said, she responded, a pretty big herd.

I started to argue that point, but then she said, Anyway, they’re all the way in Oklahoma now. Are they okay, I said. And she said, What? Are they okay? Are the elephants okay? And I said, no, Mom, are they oh kay, you know, because they’re in Oklahoma. She was silent.

Okay, never mind, I said. Yeah, really, my mom said, enough with the jokes already, and she started to talk about her tai chi class, and I started to pick at the polish on my toenails while I listened.

That’s kind of a public health nightmare, I said, after a minute, but I must have zoned out, because my mom said, What about my mahjongg game is a public health nightmare, and I said, No, I mean the elephants. And she said, Well, what about the elephants, and I said Well, imagine all that elephant shit all over the place, and she said, My goodness, only you would say something like that. Well, it’s true, I said, and she said, There’s a huge herd of elephants marching across the country and all you can think about is their poop?

What I wanted to say: Actually, I said shit. What I didn’t say: Actually, I said shit.

After that, we kind of ran out of things to talk about, so we got off the phone. I sat on my couch for a moment and did a mental scan for any sign of my motivation to get up. There wasn’t any, so I sat there another minute and watched raindrops glide down the windows, leaving trails of small droplets.

In an effort to feel like I was doing something, I started to read about the elephants on my phone. I learned about how the herd had started out as a pair of elephants that escaped from a zoo in California, but then as they made their getaway, other elephants escaped from wherever they were, which I guess was mostly zoos, and met up with the original two elephants. I guess maybe also elephants from circuses and-slash-or carnivals, probably. And so what started as a smallish herd had now definitely grown to medium-to-big and was accumulating more elephants, pretty much on the daily.

Somewhere in the Arizona-slash-New Mexico area, the elephants also started to attract human followers, who at first just rode around after them in their vans, but then they started bringing food and water to the elephants. They were also providing transpo for a couple of baby elephants that couldn’t really keep up.

HOW DO YOU EAT AN ELEPHANT, my brother Leo texted. One bite at a time, I wrote back, ha ha. He texted back: mom obsessed with elephants. Yeah, I wrote, it’s a medium-to-big herd. Wut? my brother wrote. Nvm, I texted back. Can you imagine all that elephant SHIT, he wrote. I think you mean elephant POOP, I responded. OKAY MOM, he wrote back.

I started to keep track of the elephants’ path on a map that I taped to the wall in the living room. I created a spreadsheet to keep notes about how the herd was growing and where they all seemed to be coming from. I read all the stories, including the sidebar ones about elephants who tried to escape wherever they were but weren’t able to, like, hop their fences or whatever. There was one really sad story involving a mom and baby, but I don’t really want to get into the details about that.

It seemed like the elephants were heading for the East Coast, but the path they were taking wasn’t the most direct route to any place in particular. After Oklahoma, they kind of took a dip south into Louisiana. The herd was well over one-hundred and fifty elephants at this point. They were met at the border by several college bands playing “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and there was a lot of clapping and cheering. So that was a feel-good story, I thought.

At some point, or really, several points, the National Guard was called in, but really, all they could do was either shoot the elephants or stand down. How do you shoot a blue elephant? With a blue elephant gun. Okay, not so much shoot them dead, maybe more shoot them with tranquilizers.

But no one really wanted to see the National Guard shoot one elephant, much less a whole medium-to-big herd of them, and the National Guard didn’t really want to deal with the possible protests that might ensue, so all they could do was let them go through.

Some of the people that were following the herd around also started selling elephant merch, you know, t-shirts, flags, blankets, and so forth. They all said the money they were raising was to help the elephants. It was kinda hard to know which ones were legit and which ones were just riding the elephant bandwagon. I bought a t-shirt off one of the websites, though. It was black and really soft and had this cool drawing on it of one of the baby elephants. I bought an XL one so I could sleep in it.

Those pachyderms are pretty wild, I said to my mom on Sunday morning. We usually talked on Sundays. I was wearing my new t-shirt. They are not wild, my mother said, they may have quote-unquote gone wild but there aren’t any wild elephants in the United States. I know that, I said, there aren’t any now but there used to be some. I’m sure, Melinda, said my mom.

No, seriously, I said, preparing to drop some Internet knowledge on her. They were called gomphotheres, I said, they weren’t elephants, exactly, they were elephant-_like_. Gompo-whats? my mom said. Not gompo, Mom, I said, and I started to try to explain. You do love to tell a story, my mom said.

GOMPOS GONE WILD, my brother texted. Geezus, I texted back, gomphotheres. Mom said you told her that there are wild elephants in the US, he wrote. They were elephant-like, I said, I get they’re extinct now. OKAY GOMPO, he texted back.

At this point, there had been some additional sidebar stories about incidents that had the potential to take dark turns but ended up feel good, like the elephant that got some kind of injury on its foot, and it wasn’t going to make it, but then the community where it collapsed got a big truck and loaded the elephant on and rode alongside the rest of the herd.

Eventually, the elephants started tracking north and missed Florida, which my mom was kind of disappointed about. I bet they’re afraid of the giant killer toads, I said. I don’t know how you get these things in your head, my mom said. It’s not quote-unquote in my head, Mom, I said.

There is no such thing as a giant killer frog, my mom said, confidently, and if there were, they wouldn’t be in Florida. They’re toads, mom, I said, they didn’t come from Florida, it’s an invasive-slash-non-native species. Listen to you, she said.

ATTACK OF THE GIANT KILLER FROGS, my brother texted. Bufo marinus is a real thing, I said, and btw, it’s a toad. Whatever, my brother responded, now mom thinks some killer frogs are going to eat her tiny dogs. They aren’t going to eat her dogs, I texted back, just poison them. He sent a GIF of an angry frog. OKAY BUFO, he wrote.

It was close to the end of the summer when the elephants got all the way to the Carolina coast. It wasn’t all the elephants in the entire country — some never got out of captivity, a few had trouble getting across the Mississippi (they didn’t drown, they just didn’t cross. Or at least that’s the story I like to tell myself). The ones that made it assembled on the coast by late afternoon on a Thursday. The media all gathered there, broadcasting with a lot of useless commentary and random interviews to fill the void of information, for lack of anything else to say.

As the sun started to go down, it became very quiet on the beach where everyone was gathered. The elephants stopped making elephant noises, and they lined up on the sand. Even the media commentators stopped commenting while we just watched the elephants assemble themselves.

When it became apparent that the elephants meant to march, single file, into the ocean, there was a discussion about how to stop the elephants. The National Guard shot one blue elephant with the blue elephant gun, and it slowly sank into the sand. The people who had been following the elephants formed a human chain between the elephants and the National Guard.

While the humans duked it out, the rest of the elephants marched straight to the ocean, one by one, unconcerned. And then they started to enter the water, one after the other. Not one of them hesitated. No one knew where the elephants were going, whether they were going toward something or away from something, but they swam and swam.

I didn’t get up from my couch, watching the TV as the elephants walked into the water and started to swim away from the coast in a long line as the sun went down. I saw I got a couple of texts from my brother and that my mom called, but I didn’t pick up the phone.

I watched while the Coast Guard followed alongside the elephants as they swam. I watched when the Coast Guard stopped. I watched as media crews continued to follow the elephants. I watched when the first elephant slipped under the water and didn’t resurface. I watched when the second one did. When the media crews stopped the cameras and went back to regular programming, I still watched.

I went to sleep thinking of the elephants and woke up thinking of them. Tuning in to the news, I saw new footage of the Atlantic Ocean, vast and wild and blank and free of elephants. What do you get when you cross an elephant with a fish? Swimming trunks.

I heard the catch in my mom’s voice when I talked to her on the phone later. But where did they all go? she asked. I don’t know, Mom, I said. Did they just drown? she asked. I guess they did, I said. What, my mom said, no clever story, no funny joke?

I paused for a minute. I’m pretty sure they turned into whales, Mom, I said. I’m pretty sure that this is how whales are made. Elephants just walk into the ocean and start swimming.

I heard her start to say something, but then there was silence. We were both quiet for several heart beats. Then, she took a breath. Thank you for that, she finally said. Thank you.

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