The killing is justified if the elephant's in your pajamas.

Today's news report about the death of a terrorist/serial killer elephant in India reminded me of a George Orwell essay called "Shooting an Elephant."

A grizzled columnist Karen and I worked with in Fort Wayne would read the essay to schoolkids every time one of those "month of reading" kind of things came around.

Anyway, it's a great essay about Orwell's strange time as a police officer in Burma. (And coincidentally for you non-Hoosiers, Fort Wayne has the world's largest population of Burmese outside of present-day Myanmar.)

Orwell's intent is to give an insight into the minds of British imperials and the pressure they felt to always remain cool in front of "the natives," even if it meant doing something they didn't want to do.

But what I always remember the graphic conclusion, which is like something out of a nightmare.

I don't want to post that ending, because you should read it yourself in its entirety. But here's a quick taste of Orwell's stark and visual style:

I rounded the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth.

This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast's foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit.

At least it was quick.