ELEPHANTS, REAL AND POLITICAL

By Kermit C. Moss

Mercy me, sakes alive, and carrot coffee! According to a recent Associated Press article out of Gauhati, India, about 100 wild elephants are on the rampage, “demolishing homes, feasting on sugar cane, and panicking residents” in the province called Assam in northeast India. According to the article, India is now home for 10,000 to 15,000 of these wild elephants, with some 5,000 of them in Assam.

My interest in this article was more than casual! I arrived in Upper Assam in February, 1944 and served in that area and Burma for the remainder of WWII.

We found that the area was not only known for its elephants, but for Bengal tigers,

snakes - python, coral, cobra, and several types of monkeys, including baboons that often got on top of our tents, shaking and hollering, trying to scare us away. And I’ll never forget how startled we were when we first ate in the area, and got our share of food in our mess kits, only to find that Indian hawks would fly down, take our food right out of our mess gear, and fly away with it!

Then here in the USA we find our own brand of elephants, rampaging over the will of the people, continuing the unpopular war in Iraq, and ignoring and destroying the hopes of 10,000 children and their parents by voting down an attempt by Democrats to override the veto of Bush on the Children’s Health Insurance Bill.

Let it be duly noted that no such rampaging is being done by donkeys, political or otherwise!

Lay on, MacDuff!

Kermit C. Moss
PO Box 1136
Monticello, AR 71657

PH 870-367-2486 - office
870-367-7034 - home