Black and grey shaded tattoo of an ornately decorated elephant with its trunk raised, on the side of a person's ribs.

Ornate elephant on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A standing elephant with its trunk raised, shown in profile. The body is decorated with patterned panels, a fringed cloth or saddle, and scroll details on the head and legs. The linework is bold and the grey shading gives the animal volume, with the ornate pattern set against the plain skin of the torso.

Ribs Elephant Trunk Ornamental pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The elephant came up the stairs of Gull Cottage on the last Tuesday in September, carried by a sailor who would not give his name and who left before the kettle boiled. It was a grey wooden thing no longer than a loaf, its body crowded with patterned cloth, its trunk lifted as if it had heard its name called from far off. Mrs Harriet Quick, who kept the boarding house above the harbour, set it on the landing shelf and told the lodgers not to dust it with the good cloth.

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Nobody believed the stories at first. Mr Dacre in the front room said the boots were polished by the maid, and the maid said they were polished by nobody at all, which was worse. But on the mornings after a boat was lost off the point, the elephant had turned to face the window with its trunk up, and the lodgers kept quiet about it over their porridge. Mrs Quick would only say that a creature who carries things should be allowed to choose what it carries.

When the bank came for the house in the spring, a dealer from town offered forty pounds for the elephant, and Mrs Quick took it down herself. She wrapped it in a fringed shawl and laid it in his cart. At the top of the harbour road the horse stopped and would not go on. The dealer looked back and saw the elephant had been set on the harbour wall facing home, trunk raised towards the house like a hand waving someone in out of the rain.

Next morning it was back on the landing shelf, and the boots by the door were already shining. Mrs Quick never asked how. She only put the kettle on and set out one more cup, for whoever had carried it home.