Elephants Can Cry

Did you know that elephants can cry? They're the only animal that can. Now, I don't believe that they cry because they're sad, but they can feel emotions. I know this because of an experience I had as kid.

Every spring my family traveled down to Louisiana to visit relatives. The zoo in Baton Rouge is one of the best I've ever visited. My personal favorite exhibit was the elephants. I loved elephants dearly, and this zoo had two. The last year we went down, I was seven at the time, one of the elephants had died. The one left behind, I think her name was Dolly, was very lonely. And by very lonely I mean VERY LONELY. She stood around looking sad, with her trunk drooping. She missed her friend a ton, and when we showed up to say hi, she got so excited. She raced up to the trench around her enclosure and watched us. Dolly kept reaching her trunk towards where we were. My dad reached his hand out towards her over the fence, and she tried so hard to reach it. There was about a six inch gap between his fingers and her trunk, and we got a lot of pictures of that. One of the keepers told us that Dolly had been very unhappy since her friend died, and apparently wanted to have Dad join her. Luckily, she couldn't reach him over the fence. Dolly was disappointed when we left, and continued on through the zoo. To this day, I remember her, and wondered what happened after we left. I have to admit that I'm glad that Dad didn't get kidnapped by an elephant. Still, I suppose that it could be called a close encounter.