Washington, DC - Dr. Michael "Packy" Steele, the nationally esteemed biologist and chief shit picker upper for the elephant exhibits at the National Zoo in Washington, first noticed the dim-witted behavior of the elephants last fall.
"Instead of banding together in a group as they usually do," he said, "they veer about erratically now, bumping into one another or whirling around in one spot, defecating where they eat. Others blindly jog directly into a trees or other obstacles, reverse direction and do it over again."
And then Dr. Steele began hearing rumors of disturbing news from around the country. In zoos in state capitols across the country elephants were behaving peculiarly. Some of the middle-aged bulls were fornicating with anything that moved, always hiding in the high elephant grass like they were afraid of being caught. "Queer elephants," Dr. Steele calls them, "you know that's gotta hurt."
"I just don't know what to do anymore" Dr. Steele said," Look at what happened to the lead bull at the Raleigh SC zoo. Vanished for days. Not even his handlers knew where he was. They said he was back there amongst all those apples trees, maybe hiding on that apple laden trail. He eventually turned up. The musk of a female elephant on loan from Argentina made him loopy for a while."
Responding to media inquiries Dr. Steele said, "Please, call me Packy. And I must say I haven't seen anything this baffling before, except in humans. It's like they've misplaced the last bits and pieces of any elephant common sense and decency they might have had" he said.
With that Dr. Steele pointed to one elephant he called Sarah who had wondered off by herself. " See that one there" he said, "that's a sad case. Only months ago she was the matriarch, one of strongest elephants in all the land. Now she's withered away to nothing, except for her head, which oddly just keeps getting bigger."
