For years, Tufts University has brainwashed its students into believing that Jumbo was an elephant. They print it on merch. They engrave it into history. They even put up a statue right in front of Barnum, as if to mock us.
But I see through the lies. Jumbo wasn’t an elephant. Jumbo was a mammoth. And he still is.
The evidence:
Twelve feet tall. That’s fucking huge for an elephant. But you know what it’s not huge for? A mammoth. Ever think about that?
No hair? No problem. People say, “Oh, but mammoths were covered in fur!” Yeah, well, ever heard of alopecia? It’s a common condition among mammoths. Who’s to say Jumbo wasn’t just bald?
Just look at him. Seriously. Look at the statue. What about that statue says “elephant” to you? The tusks. The massive ears? The sheer, prehistoric presence? Google a mammoth. You can see it. Right?
He died the moment people started asking questions. The official story goes that he was struck by a train. A tragic accident. But those who saw it described something else—an animal who ran toward the tracks, who chose to be hit. A death too convenient. A moment too final. As if… as if it were staged.
“Elephants” don’t behave like this. Jumbo was described as intelligent, almost eerily so. He had strange and erratic behaviors that no other elephant exhibited. Experts called it trauma. But what if it was awareness? What if this was the behavior of something that remembered the ice age, the glorious world of glaciers to which he knows he belongs. But most of all, warmth. Jumbo is so, so emotionally warm.
I know what you’re thinking. “If Jumbo was a mammoth, if he really was different—why didn’t anyone notice? Why hasn’t anyone seen him?”
I have.
He is with me.
Not always in ways you’d expect. Sometimes he’s just outside my window, watching, his form too large to fit within the frame. Sometimes he follows me to class, his steps too silent for something so large. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and find him standing in my room, unmoving, waiting.
I’ve tried to tell people. But they won’t listen. I refuse to be silenced.
Jumbo is a mammoth. And he is real.
If you don’t believe me, come to the MAB LAB tonight after midnight. Bring apples. He likes those.
