Also, that Water for Elephants book, a portion of the true section goes on about how elephants are alcoholics, and they would use their trunks to steal barrels of whiskey, and get shitfaced. They they had to deal with all of this drunk elephants meandering around trying to tell everyone their theories all night until they passed out.

Imagine how much whiskey it'd take to get an elephant hammered!

<- Former elephant trainer.

I think elephants are great. Huge and fast, very impressive. I've watched them eat at the zoo, it was neat.

No way!

I bet you taught them some pretty cool tricks! I could see you being an elephant trainer. You have this old school southern circus thing about you

I love that you use the word Neat. I have to inject that into my vocabulary more

I'm elephantless. I've hand-fed a zebu and a camel, which aren't nearly as big but are kinda huge. The camel's shedding, finally, so he looks terrible, and the zebu likes it when you scratch his back with a rake. They're coated with a thick layer of grease, too, because that helps them live in the tropics.

We had a liger until 2003, when he died of old age in ligers. I still have to tell people about this. We should get a new one, since it was a huge selling point for the zoo.

So no, no elephants. I think there was one on a class trip to Marine World, but that was a long, long time ago.

Ted, why would an elephant live at Marine World.

Here she comes
in her palanquin
on the back
of an elephant
on a bed
made of linen and sequins and silk

All astride on her father's line with the king and his concubines
and her nurse, with her pitchers of liquors and milk.

I used to play that song a lot when I had a radio show.

This makes me laugh so hard.

Hahahahahahahahaha.

Where I worked, if you worked with the elephants, you were called a trainer. I didn't teach them tricks, sadly, but I got to hose them sometimes. Which was fun, but you had to be mindful that elephants, ours anyway but I assume they all are, are pranky. They get a trunkful of water and you are going to get drenched.

Mostly, I followed them in the parade with a snow-shovel. I'll let you figure out what the snow-shovel was for.

I imagine that we were all called "trainer" because my actual job title would be too demeaning. I thought about quitting a lot. The hours were kinda sucky. The job was dirty and smelly. The pay was not great. And in the parade, people would point and laugh and take your picture. I remember some guy I was talking to once after a parade was kind of making fun. He wouldn't let it go, just totally digging in on me about the shovel. I asked him what he did and he had some kind of office job - 9 to 5, money, benefits, all that. I pointed out that, while he was sitting in an office under fluorescent lights, I was working with elephants. "Yeah," he said, "shoveling enormous shits. Why work such a degrading job? There are a million other things you could do, yadda-yadda. Why not do something else?"

I just stared at him and asked, "What? And get out of showbusiness?"

Did you read Water for Elephants? Cause you should.

Well, everyone should. It's actually quite a good book. Think The Green Mile, except there was no prison, but a circus instead. And nothing too terrible happens. And instead of a mouse, it's an elephant.

And he doesn't get smooshed.

Also, I think the pranky thing. What's the strangest thing you've seen an elephant do?

The whole time I'm reading that thinking, there's no way he can save face with that one little line at the bottom, when he's shoveling elephant shit. But then I lol'd. Well played.

i rode one at the state fair at least once, but i was little. they dont bring them around anymore. i feel like i went somewhere in oregon where we got to... meh. i'll ask my mom.

they still have them at marine world, but they sort of just lounge around in the pond.

and water for elephants was a fantastic book.

Marine World also had a zoo, and animatronic dinosaurs for some reason. The name was misleading.

originally it was just the marine stuff... and they had water shows and stuff. the dinos are all gone now and its mostly a zoo/theme park with a killer whale.

I remember riding an elephant at a circus once. I love them.

This is the most fascinating thing I've seen involving elephants. I saw a veiwing of the film at the Whitney Biennial last year.

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/blind-men-and-elephant-brooklyns-mccarr...

I rode an elephant when I was seven. It was at some zoo in California (San Franciso, I think) and it was one of the greatest experiences of my childhood.

Not nearly as great as being bitten by a lemur and becoming queen of a group of monkeys in the same day, but close.

I ate an elephant once. the entire thing!

I've not. I'll look into it.

Elephants are really smart. Think a very bright collie combined with your pet rat but moreso. They hide things when you aren't looking, and act innocent, then they laugh at you. Which you might not recognize as laughing unless you've been around them a bit. They have a different personality than more familiar animals which can make them hard to read at first.

I guess the "strangest" thing I've ever seen an elephant do is masturbate itself on a Volkswagen bug. Well, he pretty much mounted and fucked it. Fucked the hell out of that car.

Silly horny elephants.

isn't there like one video a year pop up on youtube where an elephant will sit on a trainer's head and shove it into it's ass? or at least shit all over a trainer.
maybe I'm just watching the same video over and over.

this made me laugh and laugh and laugh - i'll probably have nightmares, but for now i'm laughing.

i'm not sure i've ever been up close to an elephant, but i did have this picture i cut out of a newspaper that i carried in my wallet for years. it was of bill clinton on a trip to india, riding an elephant. as long as i had that picture i was never sad, because it never stopped being funny, and if anyone else was sad, i would show them that picture, and they would laugh too.

he was even wearing one of those sherpa looking vests, i have no idea why. i bet i still have that clipping. now i have to find it.

One of the strangest animals i've ever gotten up close to is when we went down to Oklahoma in 94/95? to go to my great-grandmother's funeral, we stayed at a family members house and their neighbor had a boatload of kangaroos and wallabees just out roaming in their backyard. Granted, their back yard was probably an acre or two, so there was plenty of room for them to run around. But we'd go out there and they'd just hop all up close to us to see what was going on. Just very bizarre to encounter that in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma and not Australia.

I've heard moose fuck cars all the time. I want to believe it, but I don't know...

yep.

[NSFW?]

I have touched an elephant once. Its skin felt very tough and hair was kinda coarse.
Also, I used to own a purse made with elephant skin. Matter of fact elephant skin was one of my favorite exotic leather until its trade got basically banned by Washington Convention.

I stayed in this little village in South India where they have a lot of working elephants. Even though these guys work hard, as Tuffy says they really have fun and quite distinct personalities.

You had to watch out for the baby (still way taller than me) as he loved to spray water, knock things over etc - but he had no clue how strong he was and he could hurt you accidently. Fantastic couple of weeks though.

If you stare into an elephant, the elephant stares back at YOU!

Tobii, this has been an excellent way to start my day.

Now I'm happy.

Elephant: Great animal or greatest animal?

Tuffy, you're cool. Even though you were shoveling elephant poop, you got to be near them, and that's pretty damn great.

Aw, hosing the elephants sounds like so much fun!

"We need something that says 'We're Republicans and We're gay.'"

Elephants are great. But not as great as mammoths. Haven't some swedish scientitsts gotten around to cloning those guys yet?

speaking of mammoths. This new ice age movie? Dawn of the dinosaurs? Didn't the dinosaurs come before the ice age? How the heck are these guys going to see the Dawn of the Dinosaurs? Did they make a time machine or something? It's crazy!

when i was a kid, my uncle took me a shady traveling circus and i rode an elephant. and as i was leaving i saw a clown take off his wig and he made a scary face at me.
just throwing that in there.

They need to clone us up some of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extanbaluchitherium.jpg

An animal so big it comes with its own butler as pictured.

1. Walruses jerk off a lot too. Hell, I guess most make mammals do. What's to stop them?
2. That elephant video is so totally fake, it's almost not even funny.
3. And in the new Ice Age movie they're basically pulling a Land of the Lost. Hope that works out better for them than it did for Land of the Lost.

Ooh, also this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ChalicotheriumDB1.jpg

The word HorseMonkey comes to mind!

That baluchitherium is basically a giant, hornless rhino/giraffe bastard.

And better than both the mammoth and the elephant combined is the Dwarf Elephant, basically an elephant that only got to be as big as a golden retriever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_elephant

Best pet ever, no argument.