Monday, November 12, 2007

Are the Elephants Friendly in Burundi?

My pal Craig has put up his Burundi photos here and here and here. Also here and here. Have I mentioned lately how much I wish I had gone on that trip? I mean aside from the first ten times.

Meanwhile, I pressured Stuart to make a Dr. Livingstone joke in one of our comics, which takes place in Zimbabwe. But I take no responsibility for the superheroine petting a wild African elephant at the end of the story. Maybe I should add a line. "Look, this one is friendly!" "Maybe it's responding to the empathy inherent in your super-light power! Elephants are wild animals and you should never approach them, missy."

Just a quick reminder as my civic duty: I don't care what you do in India or Nepal, but when in Africa, DO NOT PET THE ELEPHANTS.

4 comments:

Marie Javins said...

It's too cute to erase. Noora and the elephant... awwww.

Stuart Moore said...

It is, at that.

Really, when I wrote "Noora plays with the elephant," I meant...uh...horseshoes. That's it. Horseshoes!

Craig Duff said...

Burundi actually has no elephants, or dik-diks, or many other charismatic megafauna, because anything edible has long been eaten.

I did go to a national park outside the capital city, Bujumbura, where I saw hippos. But the ranger said their numbers were much lower than before the civil wars because the rebels had an encampment where the park currently stands, and one hippo could feed an army for a week.

Marie Javins said...

Maybe Burundi can borrow some elephants from Botswana, which has more elephants than it needs. They could take the ferry up.

I hope that you kept a reasonable distance from the hippo.