In the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, a single-tusked elephant—a creature that clearly looked at its herd and decided that social distancing was the only sane response to the 21st century—has spent the better part of January turning twenty-two humans into smears on the forest floor. Twenty-two. That is a respectable, workmanlike number. Most career politicians haven’t managed that level of lethal efficiency without at least three subcommittees, a bloated budget, and a series of focus groups to decide which demographic to alienate first. But this elephant, a grey mountain of existential resentment, is doing the work for free, one heavy-handed step at a time.

The official narrative is as predictable as a terminal illness. The 'authorities' in the West Singhbhum district are reportedly on 'high alert.' One can only imagine what 'high alert' entails in the bureaucratic labyrinth of Jharkhand. It likely involves a group of men in dusty uniforms standing around a map they can’t read, pretending that they have the slightest inkling of how to track a multi-ton biological tank in its own backyard. The forest officials are 'on the hunt,' a phrase that suggests a level of tactical competence that humans haven't actually possessed since we figured out that fire could be used to cook things we didn’t have to chase. They are tracking an animal that weighs as much as their entire family tree and possesses a memory long enough to remember when the forest wasn't a strip mall for cheap consumer goods and human waste.

We live in a world where we pretend to value human life as some sacred, untouchable absolute, yet we pack ourselves into crumbling villages on the edge of shrinking habitats like sardines in a tin that’s been left out in the sun to rot. Then, when the local wildlife decides to reclaim a few square meters of dirt by flattening the bipedal occupants, we act shocked. We call it a 'rampage.' I call it a long-overdue audit of human encroachment. This elephant, missing a tusk—likely lost in some previous encounter with our 'superior' species—is simply settling the ledger. It has been separated from its herd, the reports say. How very poetic. The animal is a pariah, an outcast, much like anyone with an IQ above room temperature who is forced to watch the global circus of stupidity on a daily basis. It wandered away, or perhaps it was pushed away by the sheer noise of human existence, and now it is expressing its disenfranchisement through the medium of crushing ribcages. Can we honestly blame it? If you were a sentient mountain of muscle and you had to listen to the constant, high-pitched drone of human industry and the incessant, moronic chatter of a species that can’t even agree on which way is up, you’d probably start knocking over huts too.

The absurdity of the 'search' is the true highlight of this tragicomedy. We occupy a planet where we can map the surface of Mars and track a consumer's browsing habits to sell them artisanal beard oil they don't need, yet we cannot locate a four-ton mammal with a missing tooth in a forest it has inhabited its entire life. It is the ultimate commentary on human incompetence. Our technology is a gilded cage; we are masters of the digital ghost, but utterly helpless against the physical reality of a very angry, very large herbivore. The 'authorities' are trying to 'track' it, which in this context means waiting for the next village to scream and then arriving three hours late with a clipboard and a look of practiced concern.

Naturally, the political response will be a masterpiece of uselessness. The Right will call for the animal’s immediate execution to protect 'property rights' and the 'sanctity of the village,' while the Left will likely draft a tear-soaked petition about the 'trauma' the elephant suffered due to habitat loss, perhaps suggesting we build it a therapy center. Both sides will ignore the screamingly obvious fact that there are simply too many humans and not enough planet. We have squeezed nature into a corner, and now that it’s biting back—or rather, stomping back—we want to play the victim. The deaths are 'tragic' only if you believe that humans have a divine right to occupy every square inch of the Earth without consequence. In reality, this is just biology. It is the friction of two competing densities. On one side, you have the burgeoning, unchecked population of Jharkhand; on the other, you have a very frustrated, very large mammal. The result is gravity. It is math. It is the cold, hard weight of a foot meeting a spine.

In the end, the outcome is scripted. The elephant will eventually be shot or drugged into a stupor, the 'authorities' will take credit for 'restoring order,' and the villagers will rebuild their flimsy walls a few feet further into the trees, waiting for the next time nature decides to check its balance sheet. We will continue to pretend we are the masters of this dying rock, right up until the moment it finishes shaking us off like a bad case of fleas. Until then, the single-tusked renegade remains the most honest actor on the stage: it doesn't have a manifesto, it doesn't have a campaign, and it doesn't care about your feelings. It just has twenty-two confirmed kills and a very long memory.