A Mammoth Discovery

Earlier this month on a bike ride downtown, I turned a corner and saw …

elephants in a parking lot.

Yes, really. Elephants, who were bordered on one side by tents of white horses and on the other, cages of white tigers. How many endangered animals can you get in one parking lot?

Only Barnum & Bailey knows for sure. Yup, turns out the circus was in town.

It was heartbreaking to see these creatures on a barren lot of pavement. After watching one elephant do nothing but repeatedly rock back and forth in place, I couldn’t look anymore. I fantasized about breaking them out of there, but even my imagination was a little lean on ideas for disguising and hiding them.

Yesterday was Elephant Appreciation Day. (Remember how I said this month was full of wacky holidays?) I meant to post this yesterday, but … well … whatever. Here’s my contribution to the special day: a list of books about elephants. The least we can do for them is understand their lives so that we may better share the planet with them.

If you have a friend or relative who’s crazy for big-eared pachyderms, snag one of these books as a gift. If you’re just trying to figure out why your friend or relative is crazy for elephants, read one yourself!

Coming of Age with Elephants: A Memoir
by Joyce Poole

Elephant
by Steve Bloom
 
Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family
by Cynthia Moss

Elephant Reflections
by Dale Peterson and Karl Ammann

Elephant Song
by Barry B. Longyear

Elephantoms: Tracking the Elephant
by Lyall Watson

Elephants (Living Wild)
by Melissa Gish

Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity
by G. A. Bradshaw

Everything Elephants: A Collector’s Pictorial Encyclopedia
by Michael Knapik

Eyewitness: Elephant
by Ian Redmond

Face to Face with Elephants (Face to Face with Animals)
by Dereck Joubert and Beverly Joubert

From Elephants to Mice: Animals Who Have Touched My Soul
by James Mahoney

Ivory’s Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants
by John Frederick Walker

Jumbo: This Being the True Story of the Greatest Elephant in the World
by Paul Chambers

Just for Elephants
by Carol Buckley

Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story
by Daphne Jenkins Sheldrick

Secrets of the Savanna: Twenty-three Years in the African Wilderness Unraveling the Mysteries of Elephants and People
by Mark James Owens and Cordelia Dykes Owens

Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants
by Katharine Payne

Tarra & Bella: The Elephant and Dog Who Became Best Friends
by Carol Buckley

The Amboseli Elephants: A Long-Term Perspective on a Long-Lived Mammal
by Cynthia J. Moss, Harvey Croze and Phyllis C. Lee

The Cowboy and His Elephant: The Story of a Remarkable Friendship
by Malcolm MacPherson

The Elephant Whisperer: Learning about Life, Loyalty and Freedom from a Remarkable Herd of Elephants
by Lawrence Anthony

The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild
by Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence

The Elephant’s Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa
by Caitlin O’Connell

The Elephants and I: Pursuing a Dream in Troubled Zimbabwe
by Sharon Pincott

The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness
by Mark James Owens and Cordelia Dykes Owens

To the Elephant Graveyard
by Tarquin Hall

Travels on My Elephant
by Mark Shand

Walking Thunder: In the Footsteps of the African Elephant
by Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson

When Elephants Paint: The Quest of Two Russian Artists to Save the Elephants of Thailand
by Komar & Melamid and David Eggers

When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy
 

Note: This list of nonfiction and memoir is by no means comprehensive. I deliberately excluded books about hunting elephants, of course (you wouldn’t believe how many there are), and I did not attempt to list children’s books on this subject because, as you may already know, there are LOADS of them.

[Photo by Nick Brandt.]

BOOKreMARKS: Did You Know…?

My brain is aflutter with what I’ve read this week and I wanted to share with you a few things I’ve learned.

1. Snails have more than 2,000 tiny teeth. Some species shoot the object of their affections with a love dart. Really.
from The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

2. After the Korean War, the Marines schemed to make money and fame by breeding an equine war heroine, Reckless, with a stallion of royal bloodlines. The military PR folks expected her offspring to win a Kentucky Derby. Problem was that Reckless fell for a bronco instead of the blueblood.
from Chicken Soup For The Horse Lover’s Soul: Inspirational Stories About Horses and the People Who Love Them

3. I often wondered how humans so quickly decimated large populations of elephants and rhinos in Africa. Here’s one reason: In the 1970s and ’80s, poachers used machine guns. Talk about having an edge…
from Bulu: African Wonder Dog by Dick Houston

4. When geriatric canines start showing signs of anxiety and behavioral changes/problems, it’s time for a vet visit. Typically, the anxiety indicates a health issue of some sort—one that your pooch is sometimes aware of long before you or technology can detect it. You can control the anxiety through behavior modification training and medication, but you need to monitor and treat the more critical source of the behavioral changes—that is, the tumor or cancer or whatever physiological ailment is taking root. (I suspect the same is true for cats.)
from The Dog Who Loved Too Much: Tales, Treatments, and the Psychology of Dogs by Nicholas Dodman

“Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
—Edmund Burke

5. If someone you know—especially an elderly someone—shows signs of confusion about recognizing everyday objects or faces or places, don’t immediately chalk it up to a faulty memory or poor vision or senility. It may be a fancy-named neurological glitch. Encourage your friend or loved one to see a neurologist.
from The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks

6. Some horses run better on turf than on dirt. No surprise there. But I AM surprised that at one point at Santa Anita, the turf racetrack crosses paths with the dirt track. That is, it switches from turf to dirt and back again to turf. If I were doing the racing, I’d find that unsettling—as did one of Smiley’s horses. Not only can it impede the horse’s ability to win, it poses potential physical danger to the horse.
from A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck by Jane Smiley

7. Jill Abramson, making history as executive editor of the New York Times, once drove the getaway van in a kidnapping. Well, more of a rescue, actually. She was assisting a friend in removing a dog from the house of the woman’s abusive ex-boyfriend. You gotta love someone who has superhero tendencies.
from The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout by Jill Abramson

[Art by Gyula Benczúr.]