A local elephant named Stompy Joe was bewildered on Saturday after an entire coffeehouse somehow managed to overlook his obvious presence.

“I feel like such an outsider sometimes,” the gargantuan said as he inconspicuously used his trunk to sip drinks at a neighboring table. “This is almost as bad as the time I got invited to a peanut gallery; not what you’d expect. Not at all.”

Stompy Joe found himself wandering around the lounge, listening to espresso-fueled customers debate philosophical, political and sociological issues that became heated gridlock at times. When he tried to point out something that should’ve been obvious in each argument, no one seemed to listen, or even notice, him.

“All I want to do is make things more apparent!” the trying tusker exclaimed. “People want to avoid really important issues because they don’t want to upset others, but it’s important to get these kinds of things out in the open.”

He later grumbled: “At least humans can have a discussion. All my friends do is stampede off which never resolves anything! Now, elephant society is dealing with mammoth-sized problems.”

The closest he came to being noticed occurred during our interview, when I asked nearby coffee consumer Abigail Sutter how she could ignore the giant piles of shit everywhere, frequent trumpeting and the multitude of chairs and tables that had crumpled under Stompy Joe’s weight.

“Meh, doesn’t interest me that much,” she said while staring into her cup. “But I am trying to find where the rest of my latte went.”