Notes:
- An elephant wearing a Santa Claus costume performs for Thai students during Christmas celebrations at Jirasart school in Ayutthaya province north of Bangkok. (Chaiwat Subrasom, wsj.com December 24, 2018)
Stir the Soul
December 25, 2018 by 17 Comments
Saturday Morning
December 22, 2018 by 15 Comments
I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea.
–Peter Matthiessen, The Tree Where Man Was Born
Photo: Lukas Holas. Quote: via Schonwieder
Bath Time!
April 10, 2018 by 24 Comments
Orphaned baby elephants take a mud bath at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. The elephant orphanage looks after 29 baby elephants orphaned by human-wildlife conflicts and poaching, among other causes. (Dai Kurokawa, wsj.com, April 10, 2018)
It’s been a long day
February 7, 2018 by 21 Comments
Notes:
- A mahout bathes his elephant in the river Yamuna in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday. (Adnan Abidi, Reuters, wsj.com, February, 7, 2018)
- Related Posts: It’s been a long day
Sunday Morning Sunrise
October 22, 2017 by 28 Comments
After reading “this“ several days ago, I’ve been unable to shake it from consciousness. “This” is driving the underlying current of my blog post shares of African animals. Even this herd of elephants who wake to the morning sun and march in Tsavo National Park, seem to be doing so solemnly.
Love and Safety (and a punch in the gut)
October 8, 2017 by 29 Comments
A worker at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya shares a tender moment with an elephant calf. Your Shot photographer I. Ogila explains, “When poachers kill adult elephants for ivory, the young ones are usually left desperate and unlikely to survive alone in the wild.” But by being in the care of the Trust, “they get a chance to live and die of old age.”
Source: NationalGeographic.com. Photograph by I. Ogila, National Geographic Your Shot
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week
August 18, 2017 by 19 Comments
Miracle. All of It.
January 27, 2017 by 35 Comments
If you were an elephant living wild in a western city…
- You’d have one two-fingered hand swinging from your face – a hand as sensitive as tumescent genitals, but which could smash a wall or pick a cherry. With that hand you’d explore your best friends’ mouths, just for the sake of friendship.
- you’d smell water two miles away and the flowers at your feet
- Grumbles from trucks and cabs would shudder through the toxic ground, tickle the lamellar corpuscles in your feet and ricochet up your bones…You’d hear with your feet, and your femurs would be microphones
- As you walked 10 miles for your breakfast you’d chatter with your friends in 10 octaves
- You’d have the happiest kind of political system, run by wise old women, appointed for their knowledge of the world and their judgment, uninterested in hierarchy for hierarchy’s sake, and seeking the greatest good for the greatest number.
- Elephants know, from distances well beyond the reach of ordinary senses, that other elephants were on the way…from 50 miles away
- Why do elephants seek out other elephants?…because they like other elephants.
- When a bereaved elephant mother carries her dead baby round on her tusks, or trails miserably behind the herd for weeks, her head hanging down, she’s grieving. When other elephants sit for hours around the body of a dead elephant, they’re mourning. When they cover an elephant corpse with soil or vegetation, or move elephant bones, they’re being reverential. When they cover a dead human, or build a protective wall of sticks around a wounded human, they’re showing an empathic acknowledgment of our shared destiny that we’d do well to learn.
- You’re a city elephant. You’ll inhabit the city much more intensely and satisfactorily than most of its human denizens. All your senses will be turned fully on. You won’t, like most woefully unsensual humans, using only your eyes.
- If they’re people, they’re embarrassingly better people than we are. They build better communities; they live at peace with themselves and aren’t, unlike us, actively psychopathic towards other species.
- Be careful, though. You’re likely to end up dead because someone wants a couple of your teeth.
~ Charles Foster, excerpts from “If You Were An Elephant” in The Guardian (Jan 19, 2017)
Notes:
- Digital Art Image Credit: Larger than Life by H3NDRIX121
- Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
- Related Posts: Miracle. All of it.
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week (Out with the X-Mas tree)
January 6, 2017 by 20 Comments
Elephants feast on discarded Christmas trees at Berlin’s zoo.
Recycling. Au Naturel. Who knew?
(Source: wsj.com by Sean Gallup, Getty Images)
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week!
December 30, 2016 by 22 Comments
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long week
October 7, 2016 by 8 Comments
The work of French artist Fabien Morello, 35, involves creative combinations of dreams, experiences, and his early childhood imagination. He blurs the line between reality and fiction. Mérelle’s complex works are small and he pays close attention to detail, two qualities that can be seen in this particular work, entitled Pentateuque. The piece is a whimsical sculpture that depicts a man, balancing the weight of an elephant on his back. It is made out of resin, paint, hair and fabric, and stands only 30 x 27 x 12 inches. The three dimensional form is a replica of the artist’s original Pentateuch 2010 ink drawing, both of which visually interpret the phrase “carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Source: My Modern Met
Saturday Morning
September 3, 2016 by 25 Comments
In one of his insightful talks Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said that in your practice you should walk like an elephant. “If you can walk slowly, without any idea of gain, then you are already a good Zen student.” There’s a mantra for your religion: Walk like an elephant. It means to move at a comfortable pace. No rushing toward a goal. No push to make it all meaningful. The sometimes inscrutable texts of Taoism and Zen teach that it’s important to do what you do without trying to accomplish anything. One of the benefits of a religion of one’s own is its ordinariness and simplicity. You don’t need a magnificent ceremony, a specially ordained minister, or a revered revelation to give you authority. You don’t have to get anywhere. There are no goals and objectives: nothing to succeed in, and nothing in which to fail. You can sit in your house, as Thoreau did, and be attentive— his suggestion. “We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it— a little? . . . If by watching all day and all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not be worth the while to watch?”
~ Thomas Moore, A Religion of One’s Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World.
Notes:
- Photo – Landlopers (via Cheetah Camp)
- Not inspired by:’Our living dinosaurs‘ There are far fewer African elephants than we thought.
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
December 21, 2015 by 23 Comments
T.G.I.F.: It’s Been A Long Week
December 4, 2015 by 17 Comments
The footage is being widely shared on the Wild Wings Safaris Facebook page – nearly 15,000 shares at the time of this post – and generating feedback that’s almost as touching as the footage. A random sampling of the comments:
- “Leave it to the smart old women to solve the problem!”
- “I feel like the mother was trying to allow he baby to figure it out on its own, but the other elephant was impatient. Elephants are stinking adorable! And they stand on their tippy toes!”
- “I wish humans would look after their kids so well. Why oh why do we treat animals so badly?”
- “Maybe it’s the mom in me, but watching it just stressed me out even though I new he was gonna get out.”
- Aren’t animals awesome? We need to realize they have feelings like us.”
Source: Grindtv (Thank you Susan)
T.G.I.F.: It’s been a long (very) week!
July 3, 2015 by 10 Comments
Don’t like Classical? Lower form than Animal.
June 16, 2015 by 12 Comments
A zoo in Belgium has released amazing footage which seems to show their elephants swaying in time to live classical music.
Live & Learn 