I use to tell my kids, "Get yourself an elephant; people will look up to you." ? What I meant was that they should reach high goals that are difficult for many other people to obtain. I still tell my grandkids in college to take solid state physics type classes rather than basket weaving. That will cut down the competition. I might note that I took plenty of solid state physics classes when I was a graduate student and I sat in on a number when I was a college professor. All in all I didn't understand exactly what in the heck was going on. Maybe nobody does. I never used one thing from a solid state physics class in all my days in the professional world. But it did get me a Ph.D. and better working conditions. I don't know exactly why this is but it is what happens. Are you kids listening? As far as elephants go, I have always wanted to have one, and hoped that one of my kids might have one in his back yard. Now I've learned that it is illegal worldwide to have a pet elephant. What a shame. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant. If many of us had pet elephants, there would not be a shortage of elephants. There are only a few places that I know of that has a surplus of elephants. I learned this at http://forests.org/archive/africa/ovelezim.htm. Zimbabwe has so many they want to sell ivory legally to cut down the elephant population. The demand for Ivory is the reason that there are elephant shortages in much of Asia and Africa. We use to have elephants in America. These are called Mammoths by us and nobody knows what the natives that hunted them called them. I think they called them Zigdogs which in the ancient American language means Run for your life! I just added Zigdogs to my computer dictionary. This is not a trivial definition. The Aztecs thought the Spanish horses were big dogs. The elephant was on the island of Crete until about 3000 to 5000 years ago. It was as big as a pig. I wouldn't call that much of an elephant. See again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant. There is nice shot of some elephants at http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/conservation/elephants/. This article claims that the population of elephants in the 1970s and 1980s dropped from 1,300,000 to 600,000. That includes all "three" living African species, the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant, the "Other" African Forest Elephant, but not the Asian Elephant, which we called as kids, the Indian Elephant. Did you know that the African Elephant of the Savannah is as different "species wise" from the African Forest Elephant(s) as the lion is from the tiger? Usually the kind of elephant you see in a circus is the Indian Elephant. The Africans never bothered to tame their critter. They preferred to eat them instead. A Slight Diversion This is quite like Geronimo who preferred to eat horses rather than ride them. I've always been a fan of Geronimo. He is in one of my novels (Bull http://www.tjbooks.com). I was stationed at Fort Sill so I know where he was incarcerated and where he jumped off the bluff. I saw aircraft fly over that very same bluff at low altitude. Out jumped hundreds of paratroopers. Each one yelled, "Geronimo!" ? Well, maybe they didn't. I couldn't here them anyway. Some of the equipment landed with a big thud when the chutes didn't open. The troops were on the ground in minutes and firing 105 mm howitzers at nothing in particular. Back to the Decline in Elephant Populations Elephants are decreasing in number because people are increasing in number and crowding them out. That is everywhere but in such places as Zimbabwe where ivory hunters, who are tired of getting shot at by rangers, want to hunt elephants in peace. My solution to the decreasing elephant population is simple: Make pet elephants legal. You would be able get one at PetSmart . I saw a guy bring a dog out of PetSmart the other day. It was as big as a full-grown pig. If it had of had a trunk I would think it was from Crete. Another great idea would to take the DNA from one of those frozen Hairy Mammoths, stick it in a female elephant's ova (a single egg is called an ovum), and plant them in the uteruses of cows near my home here in Idaho. There would be plenty of milk to feed the newborn Mammoth calves. I'll bet nobody would mess with those babies. One of my grandkids just pointed out that the Hairy Mammoth was killed by primitive hunters. Well, forget the Mammoth restoration project for now. Actually, that was a lie. My grandkids are not here today. But that is what they would tell me if they were here. Read about current Asian Elephant populations at http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/AsianElephants/elephantstudy.cfm and about African Elephant populations at http://www.npr.org/programs/re/archivesdate/2002/nov/index.html. Get yourself an elephant. People will look up to you! |
