The only thing the Cancan rainforest was more full of than green was noise. The first greeting you would receive was a sound typical of rainforests, the unceasing chirps and songs of tropical birds and the buzzing of billions of bugs. As you would trek through the environment, the ambient trickle of streams, rushing of rivers, and crashing of waterfalls would fade in and out. Canca’s more unusual inhabitants provided a racket that interrupted the rainforest’s ordinary melodies, letting the traveler know that this forest held many secrets waiting to be discovered. There was the rhythmic sound of chopping wood, as if the forest was slowly being dismantled by lazy lumberjacks. There was the creaking of tree trunks and rattling of leaves, suggesting lumbering giants whose footsteps made no sound. More bizarre than anything else was the wild and widespread trumpeting, like leagues of stranded jazz musicians communicating through faulty brass instruments.

If you flew over the island continent of Canca, it would be impossible to get a look at the land beneath you. Endless trees covered its surface in mountains of leaves. The only breaks in the canopy occurred over patches of freshwater too wide for the trees to conceal. The only residents that could be spotted were the migratory birds that passed overhead, the only creatures that could share the view a human visitor could. The thick foliage and misty mountains gave the island an air of mystery, that would only intensify as you approached it.

In an encounter with a terrible tree monitor, it was separated from its troupe, and barely escaped with its life. How long ago, it couldn’t remember; having been knocked unconscious after serious fall, it caused both the lizard and its family to lose track of it. Its plan was to start trumpeting (making noise with his trunk) from the highest point it could find, so that its call could be heard from farther away, and to be out of the reach of those hulking lizards which prowled the jungle like jaguars.

A small tree-dwelling creature, roughly the color and twice the size of a basketball frantically scurried upward through the canopy. From a distance, it would appear that it used a single snake-like arm to grab hold of branches to swing and hoist itself upward. That appendage was actually the creatures elongated nose, a trunk. Two white pointed objects sprouted out from its base, tusks on either side. From this one might conclude they were looking at some sort of tree-climbing elephant, using the combined dexterity of its arms, legs, and disproportionately long trunk to pull off complex maneuvers and move gracefully through the endless wooden jungle-gym. The unusual elephant aimed to reach a height where it could see the horizon of the vast Cancan rainforest. It always enjoyed getting a view of the landscape whenever it had the chance, much to the dismay of its troupe’s matriarch (the eldest female), who didn’t appreciate her followers wandering off the path she had spent years charting out for them. This time though, fun was the last thing on the youngster’s mind.

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“Are you keeping up with all of this?” Siuryu’s deadpan voice played in Rashid’s headphone.

“Uh, yeah, I think I got everything.” Rashid remarked. He did his best to listen while 10% of his focus was being occupied with leaping through the canopy, and 80% fixated on the troupe of scansorial elephants he spotted in the distance. The thick foliage obscured his view, but their bright orange coloration stuck out to him.

“Well, let’s go over it again, just to be sure,” Siuryu said.

“Hold that thought just for one second, Siu.” Rashid said, almost cutting her off. He got a clear view of the dozen or so diminutive elephants roaming through the branches ahead of him. They sported bright orange coats that faded to paler yellow undersides, thick black stripes marking their head and trunk, which were almost twice as long as the rest of their bodies. Most of them, he assumed, were female. There were a few who kept a close watch on the youngsters while they played and curiously inspected the various insects and flowers that decorated the branches. A few more had babies clinging on tightly to their chests, their lighter colors blending in with the caretaker’s belly. Others, it seemed, were a tad bloated, which made him suspect there were more little ones on the way.

“I think we’ve got a new species here!” Rashid said with a gleam in his eyes.

“Orange fur, black stripes? Travel in groups of about a dozen or so?”

“Uh.. yeah.” Rashid said.

“Todd told me about that one 2 hours ago. He named them “Todd’s Traveling Tigertrunks.”

“Aw man,” he said playfully, with a snap of his fingers.“I woulda called them Rashid’s Traveling Tigertrunks... Wait a minute! Todd’s out here? I haven’t seen him since I was on the Tanraran savanna two weeks ago! We gotta meet up so he can try somma these fruits I collected!”

“Rashid, focus, please.”

“Oh goodness, I’m sorry!” Rashid apologized, almost letting his attention drift off again, when he noticed a duo of treefellers swinging their necks and chopping away at a tree with their axe-like tusks. “It was the forest watering robot, right?”

“The automated evapotranspiration regulator, yes.”

“And I’ve got to stop it?”

“Close. I need you to remove the obstruction while its stopped. Which happens every 45 minutes.”

“Obstruction?” Rashid asked.

“A little scansorial elephant managed to grab onto it. We haven’t adjusted the regulators for the height of the new tree species yet, nor did we think anything could climb that high, so we didn’t have a precaution for that sort of thing. That creature must’ve jumped on the device on its own,” Siuryu replied.

“Must be a little daredevil!” Rashid chuckled at first, but his mood quickly shifted. “Poor little thing’s probably scared to death, I’ll have to be gentle.”

“As long as it doesn’t keep you from getting it done in time,” Siuryu said unsympathetically.

“Anything else I need to know?” Rashid said, in mid leap from a rocky pillar to a bundle of vines hanging from the branches of a Crikado tree.

“No, I’ll let you go do your thing. Unless you want to hear me ramble about boring biochem stuff,” Siuryu said while examining blood samples from 7 distinct populations Islandhopper elephants.

“You know I do!” Rashid said, swinging on a vine Tarzan-style.

“Really? It’s no big deal. I have a lot of work to do anyways.” She said, now 300 words into a report regarding the blood samples.

“Yeah, yeah! Helps you memorize things better, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Siuryu admitted, secretly happy to have someone to gush about her interests to, “As long as I’m not distracting you from what you’re supposed to be doing.”

Rashid chuckled, “I’ll let you know if y—woah!” he stammered, swerving to avoid the hut of a Curly-tusked grunter that he almost accidentally tread on. “I’ll let you know if you do.”

“Alright, well I just got done looking at the blood samples from Cancana Insusalire and it looks like..” She lost Rashid’s attention about 9 seconds in, when the grunter he’d just disturbed poked its head out of its hut to grunt angrily at him. Siuryu continued to unload a textbook’s worth of information while Rashid acknowledged her with a sprinkling of “uh-huh’s” and “I see’s”.

It wasn’t much longer until he laid eyes on the machine. A simple-looking metallic device, longer than a football field but only about as thick as a telephone pole. It floated 200 feet above the ground, higher than any tree aside from the Cyclomacza, which our elephant friend from earlier managed to scale, before it was swept away by the device as it whooshed by. It continued sweeping overhead, spewing out a fine mist to keep the air moisturized at just the right level to sustain the lush landscape.

Rashid thought of the creature and his demeanor went serious. At this point he forgot he was even in a call, his only concern being getting it back home safely and not frightening it any more than it already was. He jumped for the highest platform he could aim for directly from the ground, about 60 feet up. He kicked off again to highest limb that would support his bulky body. He leaped a great distance for the regulator, still moving and still far above him, so much so that he missed on his first attempt, and went tumbling down back into the treescape. He caught himself on a tree hollow, which a Blue vulture had nested in. Like the grunter, it too was upset by Rashid’s rudeness and pecked at his hand to get him away from her chicks.

A few minutes later, he finally caught up with the machine while it was stopped. He gracefully leaped onto it, landing on his feet, and carefully went to pry off the terrified little Tigertrunk who was holding on for dear life. He shuffled across the thin machine like a tightrope walker, swiftly but delicately toward the animal. Rashid could see the elephant was trembling, moving its head around frantically. This time it wasn’t enjoying the view at all. It trumpeted loudly, hoping help could come if it was heard by its family. Rashid was about an arm’s length away from grabbing ahold of the Tigertrunk when something swooped by and plucked it from the machine so fast that it caused the entire thing to wobble.

“What the?!” Rashid exclaimed as he struggled to keep his balance while worriedly looking for what had snatched the elephant. He initially expected it was a Blue Vulture or some other large raptor. For a second his heart sank, knowing he wasn’t permitted to interfere with the work of predators. He lost his footing and free-fell to the forest floor yet again. As he was falling, a rustling in the canopy caught his attention. Then he saw Todd standing on a branch nearby with a fuzzy orange ball under his arm.

“Beat ya to it!” Todd hollered. Rashid had mixed emotions regarding Todd’s methods, but he was mostly relieved.

“Rashid? Hello?” Siuryu’s voice suddenly became audible to Rashid.

“Oh! Hey! Sorry!” Rashid said, grabbing at a hanging vine, “Just got distracted for a sec there!”

“It’s fine. Where did I lose you?” Siuryu said blandly.

“Um... something about blood...” Rashid replied, his weight causing the vine to snap.

“Uh-huh.” She paused. “I can tell you’re busy, so I’ll just let you go. I hope I didn’t bore you.” Siuryu said, only slightly disappointed.

Rashid collided with the soft muddy ground, at such a velocity that was still painful but easy enough for a tough guy like him to ignore, “Gahh! I’m real sorry, I really did want to know about that blood chemistry stuff,” he said.

“It’s fine. If you really do want to know about it, you can just read the report in the Gompto islands section of today’s journal,” Siuryu said, both of them knowing Rashid could barely read more than a fortune cookie without having to take a break.

“You betcha Siu! We’ll talk about it next time. I’ll tell Todd you said hi.” Rashid said as he bounded over to where Todd proudly stood.

“I didn’t say hi.” Siuryu hung up.

“Hey T-double-D” Rashid said, as he approached his fellow ranger, “So what are you gonna do with that?” Rashid gestured at the terrified elephant which Todd had under his left arm.

“I don’t know...” Todd said as he examined the creature, “I was thinking about throwing it to a monitor.” Todd grinned mischievously as Rashid gasped. It wasn’t the first time that Todd’s joking took him off-guard.

Todd put the elephant down on the ground as gently as he could muster. “go on then,” he said, prodding it with his foot, “get out of here, shoo.” The rattled creature was still trembling, and staring at the two rangers nervously. It was too confused and exhausted to run away.

“Now hold on a minute.” Rashid said, swiftly picking the Tigertrunk up and cradling it against his torso, “I saw a group of them earlier. This one looks like a baby, he probably got lost or something.”

“So?” Todd shrugged.

“Well we can’t just leave him here! We gotta get him back to his family or somewhere safe.”

“You want to keep him, don’t you?” Todd rolled his eyes as the two of them ran and leaped through the jungle toward Todd’s vehicle, which was parked on the beach. “Y’know Jane’ll get pissed about that.”

“Well, just think about it this way,” Rashid said, “It was our fault he got lost out here in the first place, so we’re really just undoing the tampering that we already did!”

“Huh, I actually think she might fall for that,”

“No worries bro, I’ll make sure we find a good place to set him loose!”

“And if not, I might get to see one of those big lizards in action,” Todd chuckled, teasing Rashid for his altruism. Rashid hesitated to respond. The little Tigertrunk had wrapped its trunk around Rashid’s shoulder and clung on to him with its feet, its eyes now shut and its breaths slow and steady.

“Ohhh!” Rashid gawked at the adorable display, “Bro, look! He went to sleep on me!”

“That’s uh, great, dude. I’m sure the tourists will love it,”

“Tourists..?” Rashid suddenly remembered. “Oh! That’s right! We’re about to open the park!” his excitement swelled, “I can’t believe it’s already happening!”

“Yeah, finally.” Todd said, “Hopefully this whole thing pays off. I’m getting tired of seeing the same old faces here every day. Plus, if we don’t make a profit soon we’ll all be out of a job.”

“I’d say it’s about time anyways,” Rashid said, “16 million years, and we’ve got elephants in trees, elephants underwater, tiny fluffy elephants being chased around by giant birds..”

“Place sure has lived up to its namesake,” Todd said as he climbed into his vehicle. “I’m gonna catch up with my team and head to another area. You and your guys can finish up here.”

As Todd flew away in his personal aircraft, Rashid sat down on the beach for a short rest, watching a trio of Elephishers wading through the water on stilt-like legs. Their heads were turned down, searching for crabs that they would swiftly pluck up with their hooked trunks. In the distance, he saw what appeared to be a crocodile the size of a humpback whale, surfacing briefly for a deep breath before diving back into the deep, its tail producing an enormous splash whose ripples continued all the way to the shoreline. Beyond that, the silhouette of many more vast islands sat on the horizon, each housing their own unique assortment of bizarre creatures waiting to be discovered. “We’re finally here,” Rashid said to himself.

“Elephantland.”























