Elephants on Parade

I witnessed something at the zoo last weekend that I didn’t know occurred naturally in the animal world. I tried to get my camera out in time to capture the moment, but I was too slow for the amazing part and only got the part that you don’t want to see. Mind you, I’m no stranger to observing odd animal behavior. My sister’s last dog was a connoisseur of other dog shit when she wasn't darting through the electric fence, shocking herself before bolting for hours on end, when she would most like eat more other dog shit. My mother in law’s crazy poodle was a notorious carpet scooter who regularly masturbated with a bedroom slipper. My own two cats frequently indulge in mutual butt sniffing and anus licking, usually while the rest of are trying to eat breakfast. All I’m saying is, there is plenty of behavior in the animal kingdom that is frowned upon in the human world, but maybe it is natural after all, so who are we to judge?

This was not the first time I have been shocked at a zoo. I’ve seen my share of monkeys jerking it and turtles mounting each other. Once I saw a zebra’s giant cock unfurled, practically dragging along on the dusty ground behind him. And there is my favorite zoo story, at least until last weekend’s incident. My husband and I were at the San Diego Zoo. That zoo has a strong animal enrichment program, where they encourage problem solving and variety to improve their animal residents’ quality of life. They did this by smearing peanut butter on rocks and hiding tasty vittles inside of old logs in the enclosures and even providing children’s toys for the animals to enjoy. Anyway, we were watching the monkeys, along with a group of young children and their parents who were busy videotaping so they could relive the magic of their special day. The monkeys were in an enclosure that was more like a cage than a habitat. It had wire mesh on top as well as on the sides, and the monkeys were swinging around and ooh ooh oohing and generally doing their monkey business. That’s when things took a gruesome turn. A sweet little songbird alighted on the top of the monkey cage. Before you could say Ozzie Osbourne, one of the monkeys reached up through the wire and snatched that bird, biting its head off clean. While all the children and their Spielberg wanna be parents watched, those monkeys passed the headless bird corpse around, each taking a taste like it was some kind of communal ice cream cone. Those monkeys weren’t interested in peanut butter smeared on a rock. They created their own animal enrichment program, much to the horror of the human patrons. You can see why it was my favorite zoo story.

But back to last weekend at the zoo. We bought food for the animals, which resembles rye-crisp flatbread crackers. I couldn’t coerce my children to taste them, so we walked to the first animal exhibit, the elephants. We have two elephants at our zoo, and normally they are big fans of these crackers. We walked up to their area but didn’t bother to open the cracker pack. One elephant was standing still, chewing some hay. The other elephant had its trunk shoved up the first elephant’s ass. Now, I am not talking about a little finger like tip stuck in. I am talking a couple of feet of trunk rammed up there, so there was no mistaking where the trunk was, not even for the littlest of children who were trying to process what their formerly innocent eyes were seeing. This was no sweet elephant scene where one elephant daintily holds the tail of another in its finger like trunk opening, like you would see at the circus. No. This was fisting in the animal world, or as my husband put it later that day, trunking.

And it wasn’t brief either. It lasted long enough for us to have a good laugh, but not long enough for me to point and shoot my camera. By the time I got the camera out and zoomed in, the trunk had been removed from the first elephant’s anus, only now it was holding a giant wad of fresh crap in the equivalent of its elbow. That I did get a picture of, in case you would like to see it. You can imagine what happened next. The elephant with the shit covered trunk (nose?) snacked on the fresh poop, daintily pinching off hunks and stuffing it into its mouth, chewing thoughtfully on the steaming hot feces. At this point, I was the only one laughing. Everyone else hurried off to see the lemurs, but I stayed long enough to be impressed with that elephant's ability to simultaneously hold a ball of crap balanced on its trunk while using the same trunk's end to feed itself shit.

Needless to say, we didn’t waste our crackers on the elephants. The goats, those beggars, were thrilled.