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Writer's pictureKathryn Heller

Mammoths Aren't Extinct

Updated: Jan 6, 2021

Let me just start this story by saying when I was about 13 years old the Ice Age movies were one of my favorite movies to watch. I would constantly have one of them on, so I ended up becoming fascinated with the animals in the movie. I decided to learn facts about them. I remember hearing from someone in my class that there was still one mammoth alive and I was beyond happy because I had been told they were all extinct, and as far as I knew, I was the only one in my family to know this. I had no clue what to do with this information, but I had to brag to someone about what I had learned. Later that day my dad took my sister Kerri and me to see our mom. She brought us to a Mexican restaurant called Chevy's. We were eating and I was dying to tell them, but I couldn't figure it out. Kerri asked me to come to the bathroom with her, so as we sat in our bathroom stalls I was trying to plan ways to tell them so they would be impressed with me. Kerri started talking to me through the bathroom stalls and I was getting overwhelmed with thinking and listening I told her to be quiet because my favorite song was playing...it was a song completely in Spanish..I had never even taken a Spanish class. I'm not sure what she was thinking at that moment because she knew I didn't know Spanish. I hurried up and flushed and washed my hands and ran back to the table, I wasn't't going to ruin my plan this way. After a couple minutes she came back giving me a weird look, I could tell she was still thinking about the bathroom incident. My mom had ordered us dessert while we were in the bathroom and I could tell I was running out of time, so I blurted out, "you know there is still one mammoth alive". I had the biggest grin on my face as my mom and Kerri just stared at each other contemplating what to say. I felt so proud to know something they didn't know. We sat there for a minute until my mom said "No there isn't baby". Kerri started to laugh, and I got mad because I knew they just didn't know and I would have to explain it to them. I said, "Yes there is one mammoth left, it is in the U.S. to keep it safe". Again I got stared at and my mom asked me "Where would they keep it?" I replied with a matter-of-fact face and said "The Smithsonian Museum." Kerri quickly answered and said "Everything in the Smithsonian is dead." I paused for a moment and looked at them with tears in my eyes and said "It died....?" At that point Kerri and my mom were laughing so hard other tables were looking at us, while I was sobbing. They both ended up peeing themselves in the booth and we had to wait until they were dry enough to leave the restaurant. Until this day I am still mocked by my family for thinking there was still a mammoth alive in a museum.


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