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Subject: FFFBI Agent Nelson

Dateline: May 22, 8:17 a.m.

Chunk. Clunk. Plunk. Sploosh.

Agent Nelson is sitting in his breakfast nook. To many of us, it's not so much a nook as a huge dining area, but when you're an elephant, huge dining areas have a funny way of turning themselves into nooks.

It's breakfast time, and he's fixing himself some cereal. A sparkly cascade of Mister Gentleman Super Frosted Laser Chunks splashes happily into his favorite half-gallon cereal bowl. An elephant needs plenty of sugared oomph to kick start his morning, and Nelson has a big sweet-tusk.

In his left hand he holds the latest in a series of secret field reports and surveillance intelligence papers. He studies them intently, and doesn't look up as his right hand puts together his substantial breakfast. He could make himself breakfast in his sleep (and actually did so once—until the smell of sizzling bacon woke him up).

But slowly the milk dribbles and drizzles to a single last drop. Without getting up, without even looking up from his documents, Nelson arches his trunk back over his shoulder, pulls open the fridge, and his trunk nozzle disappears inside the door. A loud sucking noise can then be heard throughout the whole building, like a nightmarish wet-vac.

Slurp. Sluuuuurp. Burp.

He closes the fridge with his trunk, retracts it, and it hovers above the cereal bowl for a moment. Then—goosh!—out come two perfect pints of milk, soaking Mister Gentleman's finest flakes with fresh cow juice.

Nelson guzzles the rest of his cereal, tosses the empty bowl into the sink and files his papers in his briefcase. Time for work. He picks up his keys from the table by the door, and slips a VHS in the case too. It's one of his favorite movies, and he has to get it back to the video store today: "Four Puddings and a Funeral."

As he reaches to unlatch his apartment door, there is a small ping.

A button pops off his shirt. He bends down to pick it up.

Rrrrrrrrip.

"Oh, Man," he says.

His pants rip from seam to seam, and as he stands back up, the pants fall completely apart, dropping with a silent crumple to the ground, left leg to the left and right leg to the right. Two neat piles of trouser legs sit on either side of his big feet. Whoever guessed pants could even do that?

"Oh, Man," he says again.

This morning's boxer shorts sport a jolly floral pattern, with bees and daisies and happy woodland creatures. Not exactly Fin, Fur and Feather Bureau of Investigation standard issue, but he's been at the Bureau long enough to know that an elephant's undergarments are, by and large, his own concern. And these are indeed large.

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