Decades ago, I was in Thailand at a safari park with a coconut cracked open from the refreshment stand, sipping the milk through a plastic straw.

An elephant did something deeply human and thugged that coconut right out of my hand, and into its mouth it went. Those trunks are quick and I, a dumb tourist, was not on guard.

Best thing I could do was pluck the straw from its maw, as that probably would not have been healthy.