Baby Elephants Cubed

(Warning: Fiction)

So I get this wonderful idea for a business venture. I offer to dig a cube shaped hole in my neighbor's front lawns. Seven feet x seven feet x seven feet. Why? To capture baby elephants.

I explain to my neighbors that I will pay them 2 cents a cubic foot per month and then split the proceeds for any baby elephants we capture. The baby elephant market is very lucrative. They tell me that they haven't seen any baby elephants around our part of Texas running loose. I reply that the baby elephant traps that I already have in service must be doing their job, but you never know. Do you want your petunias trampled? Do you want small children scared? What about the poor defenseless kitties and puppies? (The weak minded ones start to come around by then - the smarter ones have already ran me off with a broom)

"Why 7 feet?" - they usually ask. I reply that is the optimal size for catching baby elephants. If they are much bigger than that, they are too hard to handle, and smaller ones, not enough money to pay the postage.

"How do you get the baby elephant to get in the hole?"

"A mirror" I reply

"A mirror?" they are puzzled and intrigued

"Yes, you put a small mirror at the bottom of the cube and the baby elephant peers over the edge and see another baby elephant at the bottom of the cube, "a friend!", and jumps in. If the elephant is too big, it won't fit in the cube, and eventually moves on down the street. If its too small, it becomes frightened by the now-much-larger reflection in the mirror at close range and jumps out of the hole."

I even offer that I will be glad to fill their hole back in if they decide they no longer wish to participate at a future date.

So ... (literary pause) a couple months go by. The first person to buy the "hole" story is getting irritated with their 7x7x7=343 cubic foot non-productive baby elephant trap, even though I have paid them $6.86 per month. They call demanding their front yard hole be filled back. I let them know there will be a  $1715 charge (or $5 a cubic foot) to put the dirt back. They are upset. I reply that it is in the contract that they signed. $5 a cubic foot for me to put some dirt back. They demand their dirt back freely and say they will fill it in themselves. I remind them that the next paragraph in the contract shows that they sold me their dirt. They ask how much I will charge to get their dirt back and not fill in the hole. $2 per cubic foot just for the dirt, plus mileage. By this time they are getting livid. They say that they will just get someone else to do it. I remind them of the next paragraph in the contract that states I have a lease on the hole for as long as I pay them $6.86 for the cube. AND if they have someone else fill in the hole there is a $10 per cubic foot penalty, as damages against future earnings for capturing baby elephants.

Then they ask, "I thought you originally told me that you would be GLAD to fill in the hole if I wanted to end the 'hole' thing"

"At $5 a cubic foot, wouldn't you be GLAD too?"

This story is a not-so-far fetched representation of the real ordeal one of my friends went through when dealing with a credit card processing company after they decided not to use the card reader at their business, even though it was never installed.

No neighbors, elephantine or human, were harmed in the making of this story.

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