The Death of an Elephant

Kadizzle is sixty six years old.  In those years he has never heard such cacophony.  At the hotel in Belize City as we sat having breakfast outside a very large man in red pajamas appeared lumbering down the steps. That was the first sighting of this enormous beast.  The day progressed and we went about our activities until it was time to move into the lounge and wait for our taxi.

Kadizzle sat quietly using the computer in the lobby.  When he got up from the computer the giant man in his red pajamas took Kadizzle's place at the computer.  Then the first bellowing roar emanated from the man.  It sounded like an elephant in the throes of death.  The architecture of tile and stucco only added to the thunderous roar.  This man would have dressed out at the butcher shop at about four hundred and fifty pounds. Next came a throat clearing or cough worthy of a walrus or hippopotamus.  Surely the man was dying, but he just kept pecking at the computer.  The intensity and duration of the sounds coming from this land locked hippo was inconceivable.  Everyone in the lobby at first tried to pretend the thunder claps and belches were not happening.  Oh, yes the belching.  The man seemed to have a tube in his throat like some sort of tuba that could resonate the longest tugboat belch known to humankind. Of course there was coughing to accompany all the other fog horn sounds.

As this went on for sometime people began to give each other strange looks, and roll their eyes.  Kadizzle kept thinking a doctor should be summoned, but the man just seemed like a lion declaring his territory.  Thankfully all the gases and noise were coming out the top end of this gaseous beast.  Had any of the torrents of wind taken the other exit an emergency evacuation would have been in order.  After going on for about ten minutes or more the eruption finally subsided.  How close to an explosion we were no one knew, but such a display is a once in a lifetime event.  Thankfully no children were present.