Elephants

This post is prompted by an e-mail from my Mom in Florida, who says that when she returned to her car at the mall yesterday, there were three big Indian elephants from a nearby circus getting a bath on the pavement! She describes them rolling on the ground like her cat when she scratches its belly. The trainer had attached a hose to the fire hydrant and was sudsing them up. If he said “foot,” the elephant would stick it out to be washed, if he said “sit,” they would sit up like humans. After the bath, while the trainer washed his truck, they squirted each other with trunkfuls of water from a bucket. “Hilarious and adorable," she writes, “if you can call 3 animals that large adorable.” When they were done, the trainer called all their names. When he said “tails,” they held tails and marched off through the parking lot. She had been watching them for 35 minutes.

Here are a few interesting elephant sites:

• Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert, a mesmerizing taste of his artistic installation, which includes some beautiful photographs of elephants.
• A car commercial featuring the beauty of elephants swimming.


• Modoc by Ralph D. Helfer, an extraordinary true story of a boy who grew up with an elephant, survived a shipwreck with him by floating on his back, and later in life was miraculously reunited with the animal.


• A slideshow of animals in the womb, including some remarkable photos of elephant embryos.