elephants

I looked out the door of the building with hand-made things and saw ... elephants. As you have no doubt surmised, elephants are not a common farm product in Michigan.

It turned out that there was an elephant-ride concession.

I have very mixed feelings about this. There were four elephants, two bigger and two smaller (the smaller ones were not very small, just small-er). They were "confined" by a rectangle of electric wire -- one (1) strand -- which was inside a rectangle of ... plastic snow fence. I mean ... the *sheep* were behind chain-link................

On the one hand it was cool to be so close to the elephants. One at a time gave rides. She had an aluminum thing on her back. People would climb up some stairs and get on, and she would walk inside the perimeter of the snow fence, then those people would get off and some more would get on. We were just outside the snow fence, so we were Right There, by Elephants......................

I didn't think that the elephant was being asked to do "too much" (not that I would necessarily know) -- I saw groups of four people ride, and in each case at least two were small children). It seemed that the guy walking with the ride-giver was being nice -- I didn't see any crossness or yelling or poking with that hook or anything.

One big elephant was swapped out for the other, when we were watching, so they did not work all day.

And yet.

How can it be safe for them, to be so poorly confined? If anything went wrong, with all those people everywhere, the elephants would be toast........... And with all the commotion, with all that noise (screamers on the midway rides!), traffic, etc., I could easily imagine them being frightened..... Not that they were anything but utterly calm while we watched. These are African elephants, too. Not as tractable as Asian elephants.....

I also wondered about their condition. They had hay to eat, and were eating it while we watched (the rectangle defined by electric wire had hay on the pavement). They did not look thin. But they looked crusty. The elephants at the Toledo Zoo do not look crusty. And on tv, you see zookeepers teaching the elephants to lie down, so they can be scrubbed all over with brushes and moisturizers................

I don't know. I hope those elephants are well-cared for and loved and have a great life. I can easily see that their life is, at least, less boring than elephants in the zoo who never get to go anywhere, month in and month out.

I hope things are ok for them.

The one time I saw them show any emotion was when they switched the ride-givers. The small ones very eagerly greeted the one who was coming off-shift, even though, as far as I know, she was never out of sight; never more than 20 feet away.

This first pic shows them greeting her. You can see that the smaller one in front has its trunk in the bigger one's mouth -- a typical elephant greeting. You can also see the electric wire.....






















Elephants are so ... amazing. Those ears. Those wrinkles. That trunk -- unique amongst mammals (perhaps only an octopus has similarly useful appendages?).
























Here you can see some of the crustiness. Their heads and ears had this scaly dead-skin-looking stuff............ I surely hope they were/are ok...........