The Elephant in the Room

Elephants, perhaps surprisingly, have featured rather noticeably in my life of late. Which I hope is not actually some kind of subliminal message from Jenny Craig about my hijacked weight loss plan (well, it is winter you know, Saint Jenny — who can resist stodgy food and chocolate in this weather?)

Well, anyhow, back to the elephants. The first encounter of the Elephant Kind was during an in-depth, philosophical conversation with a friend in which the ‘elephant in the room’ saying was mentioned once or twice.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have noticed this, as weird conversations are not necessarily noteworthy in my usual sphere. But I did make a mental note about the mention of elephants on this occasion because there had been two of them living just up the road from me for the past couple of weeks.


No, I am not kidding! The circus was in town and, while the two big fellows no longer perform as part of the circus, they still manage to attract plenty of attention. After all, an elephant is not something you often see in suburbia.

In fact, imagine the surprise of my friend’s golden labrador as she dashed across the local reserve towards what looked like an innocent mound of dirt, only to have the mound of dirt suddenly stand up! The poor dog was so astonished she did a backwards doggy Moon Walk that would have made the late Michael Jackson proud!

My own Scruffy Dawg (my mini schnauzer) also did a double-take when he saw the giants.

“Omigod!” he shrieked in amazement. “Can you imagine the bones THOSE mothers could bury!” (Or something like that. My ‘schnauzer’ is not yet very fluent).

Luckily he was on the leash because I am sure he would’ve become a schnauzer pattie in about ten seconds flat had he ventured any closer.

All this talk of elephants reminded me of the local elephant legend where a young boy was quietly fishing in a creek when he suddenly found an elephant crashing through the undergrowth towards him. In North East Victoria, Australia. Just imagine the poor kid’s shock!

Especially when the most exotic thing he probably expected to see that day was a European carp — if he was lucky!

But I digress. We’ve become so accustomed to seeing the elephants around my neighbourhood during the past few weeks that they have almost become a bit pass

“What, you don’t have an elephant in your street?” I say to my out of town buddies, “how odd!”
Scruff, too, now finds nothing strange about passing a four ton gargantuan on his daily walk. In fact, I suspect he has come to think of the local ‘elephant’ park as his own personal Serengeti.

Furthermore, I think he rather fancies himself to be a mud-dunking wildebeest, judging by his fondness for slopping in every available puddle!

But anyway, today we discovered, sadly, that our beautiful, betrunked buddies are gone. The time had come for the circus to move on.

“See ya next time, you camels,” said Scruff, who’s clearly not very up with his circus animals.

And then he rolled in the biggest poo he had ever seen!