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Elephant

The Headmaster
Posted on: 16 October 2005, 6:43pm

Not what but how - envisage the slain elephant, with a proud hunter in the foreground. See also lion and tiger, maybe zebra as well.

theo
Posted on: 17 October 2005, 8:48am

E is for Elephant Gun.
Which is how we make IVORY, kids.

christhepiss
Posted on: 4 May 2006, 10:07am

....or circus elephant....perched on a plinth......didn't they used to balance on two legs and curl their trunk in an endearing fashion........begging for a bun no doubt

The Headmaster
Posted on: 4 May 2006, 11:45am

Yes, and it's definitely easier to fit a circus elephant onto a card than a dead elephant plus a Great White Hunter (and his retinue of bearers and servants). So a balancing Jumbo goes on the list.

"Un éléphant qui se balançait, sur une toile d'araignée" as the children's song goes (excuse my French). See below.

The Headmaster
Posted on: 15 May 2006, 11:08am

OK, a circus elephant it is, doing some tippy-toes act and wearing a demeaning hat. I vaguely recall Disney's Dumbo wearing similar (and wielding a baton), though I've not looked up any reference as I like to maintain a naive freshness where possible.

The red nail varnish is, of course, to provide camouflage when hiding in cherry trees - "Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree? No? It must work then!" (my apologies for a very old joke).

Elephants are the only mammals with four knees, I'm told, and apparently they can't jump (though they're not alone in that I'm sure - neither can a sloth, possibly, nor can a blue whale, perhaps, nor can Steven Hawking, definitely).

That's enough animals for the circus for now. I could add a clown though: scarey but not unPC UNLESS it were supporting the branding of some fast food chain.

The Headmaster
Posted on: 27 May 2006, 10:33pm

I thought spider's web balancing was the stuff of pure fantasy, but today I learnt that Emperor Galba, who briefly succeeded Nero, sought to amuse the populace with tightrope walking elephants. Stephen Fry said it so it must be true*. Unfortunately he was also an indolent skinflint, and was hacked to pieces by a troop of his Pretorian Guard.

The line "sur une toile d'araignée" is sung with an extra syllable on "un-e" (in the style of speakers from the South of France) to keep the metre. As a slightly precocious child I'd assumed the line was "sur une etoile d'araignée" - that a spider's web in French was known as a "spider's star", which made perfect poetic sense. It was only when looking up the spelling (my French is now rusty) that I realised my mistake.

* Sadly Stephen Fry is not infallible, also on QI he misattributed the 'Can't a man have a biscuit' story to the Duke of Devonshire and fell into the trap of believing 'kangaroo' means 'I don't know' (it was a local aborigine name for a particular type of grey kangaroo, Lieutenant Cook's fault was in applying it to all kangaroos, like calling all dogs poodles). However, he's very good in Pocoyo.