As Dylan looked through the box without results, he began to worry that he dove headlong into these weird costumes too quickly, though to be fair, he had no reason to belive that they would do this. But eventually, Dylan found a small, stapled booklet at the bottom of the box that has the generic look of a basic owner's information packet. Relieved, he pulled it out and began thumbing through its few pages.
At the beginning, the book has some crude infographics depicting a cartoon human applying animal parts to their body and them sticking, similar to how Dylan had seen firsthand. He flipped to the back and found a picture of the person removing a costume paw from their ankle. It showed an arrow going up, one twisting around, then one going down and the paw coming off in the direction of the down arrow.
"Aha! I'd only tried pulling!" Dylan said himself, excited to have solved the process. He immediately went to his trunk, pressing it further against his face, twisitng, and then tugging on it.
"OW!" he said in surpise, as the trunk held fast. He tried again, pushing and tugging harder, but it only served to hurt his elaphantine nose even more. He kept pushing, twisting and pulling several more times, to no avail, until he eventually decided to actually read the instructions to figure out what the picture was trying to convey.
He opened the manual back up and looked at the text next to the pictures only to realize that it was... squiggles? He quickly shuffled through the handful of pages in the manual to find that they were all written in... something. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't any language he recognized immediately. Maybe it was something Asian. Or Arabic?
"Oh man, I really should have paid more attention in social studies," Dylan thought. "Also, what the heck? Why is the box in English but the instructions aren't?"
After an inital moment of panic and frustration, Dylan got an idea. He pulled out his smartphone and searched the appstore for "translation app camera" and received several results. The nearly five star apps were all paid, and not cheap at that, so he decided to try a free one first. Three and a half stars is still decent, he figured.
Once the app downloaded, he opened it and pointed his phone at the booklet. He took a picture of the page with the costume removal pictures, and the app generated a block of text that was supposed to be the page's English translation. Reading through it, it was a bit more garbled than he'd like, but he hoped he could decipher enough for his purposes.
After skimming it a few times, he eventually found a chunk of text that seemed promising. "... in process extract, hold of firm press long. force. five during second 7//\=/_$%6k around reverse -- pull release &&{ grip in ][hands careful, of process, begin order, start antipode,, ongoing continue from..." Could that be it? "firm press 5 seconds" or whatever? Dylan had only pushed and pulled quickly, maybe it was just a matter of waiting. Actually, that would make sense to make sure the costume doesn't come off accidentally.
Convinced enough, Dylan decided to give it another try. His trunk was still sore from his futile attempts from before, so he decided to go with a different part in case this wasn't it either. Dylan reached up to his left ear, pressed on it, counted to ten to be sure, then twisted and pulled. To his relief, the costume ear came free of his head with a satisfying pop. He felt at his human ear, now a bit hot and flushed, happy to find everything seemingly in order.
He felt a bit lopsided now, so Dylan took hold of his right ear and pushed, held, twisted, and pulled again. Likewise, the ear came off easily, as if it would have just fallen off on its own otherwise. Finally, he moved back to his trunk and tusks. He pushed, held, twisted, and...
"OW! What?!" Dylan exclaimed again, as the trunk didn't budge when he pulled. He kept trying the process, waiting longer, twisting more, changing grips, pulling on the tusks, but nothing worked. As more attempts to remove the appendage came up short, he began to panic again. Why would it work with his ears but not his trunk? He read through the mangled translation again and again, unable to find an answer.
"Screw this!" he eventually yelled in exasperation. He opened the appstore back up on his phone and went to one of the expensive translation apps. If it was dropping twenty bucks on a phone app he may never use again, or having to explain the trunk to his family when they get home, it wasn't too much money to ask for. He could just explain the purchase as something he needed for a school project if his parents asked. It's educational, right?
Dylan hurriedly started the download, then opened the app and pointed his camera at the instruction booklet again. He found his mistake when he read that...