Gherkin Street

By Red Dinger:

I've got a confession to make. I was one of those people that did my utmost to stop those elephants being transported to Taronga Zoo.

Yes, I even went to Thailand and clung to the cage so they couldn’t fly them out that day. I wasn’t alone. My friends at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, RSPCA and Humane Society International were there as well. The papers said our protest “terrified the elephants” but what would they know? Its perfectly normal behaviour for an elephant to become white-eyed, trumpet and bash its head against its cage wall. I do it all the time.

When people become aware of what I have done I suppose the question most asked of me is, “Sir, I won’t ask again, would you like fries with that?” That’s the trouble with the fast-food youth workers of today, they just don’t care about animals.

Occasionally I get asked why I feel so passionately about animals in captivity and in truth its only elephants that I get worked up about. In Thailand, elephants are revered – they spend their days working to exhaustion, surviving on meagre rations and being brutally whipped by their owners. Plus they get to wear those bright and funky Thai garments. Who wouldn’t want to live like that? Thankfully, with the new Workplace Agreements in Australia it’s only a matter of time. Apart from the Thai garments that is. We’ll only be wearing loin-cloths. Actually, I'm quite looking forward to that.

To be honest, I don’t really like elephants. It all started when I was out on the town with a few country mates we decided to go “cow tipping”. Contrary to popular belief, this is not when you add 10% to the bill even though the waitress “accidentally” spilt the food all over you - geese, I was referring to the door handles when I said “nice knockers” and the next thing I end up with hot-dogs for earrings? Ahem. Sorry. Cow tipping is when you sneak up on a cow in the night and push it over.

Now some people reckon it’s a myth. Well, I witnessed my mates from the country tip a cow first hand. It was base, primitive and silly. Boy how we laughed.

Unfortunately, I was there first hand when my mates pointed pout the cow I should tip over. Trust me; never go drinking with the boys from Dubbo. Did you know that their zoo doesn’t have any cages? Neither did I and no matter how hard I ran into that “cow” it simply refused to tip over. It was seriously heavy.

They say that it is good luck to have a toy elephant in your house provided its trunk is raised into the air. I refuse to have a toy elephant in my house. The last time I saw an elephant’s trunk raised in the air it was wedged between my legs. Fortunately, it did not stay there for long. The fact that it threw me thirty feet into the air solved that problem. The good news is that the landing was much softer than I feared. The bad news is that lions get seriously upset when being awoken by a human falling on them.

What annoyed me most about the whole night was that I could have sworn I heard the elephant laughing at me. It might as well as. My Dubbo mates were. So were the hyenas. The lion refrained though. Mind you, it’s hard to laugh when you have someone’s leg in your mouth.

It’s true you know, elephants are intelligent. Scientists have proven that they recognise themselves the mirror which is apparently a sign of intelligence (which must mean Paris Hilton doesn’t know what she looks like). Scientists thought they had proved this years ago but realised their mistake when they noticed the elephant’s trunk was too small. Turned out to be Oprah.

Anyway, the elephants are here and I'm not happy about it. Truth is, my mates from Dubbo are coming down to Sydney and we are going to hit the town. It’s only a matter of time before we end up sneaking into the zoo after dark. Man I wish those elephants were still in Thailand, I still haven’t retrieved my underpants from the last tossing.