Elephants

Liberals would have you believe that elephants are being wiped out by poaching. They recount how 5000 elephants have been slaughtered for their ivory this year, and how the Chinese are the ones buying it, driving the poaching. Then they casually mention in small print that there are still half a million elephants. And carefully do not mention that half a million elephants will result in 100,000 baby elephant births this year. So 5,000 isn't actually that many compared to natural dieoff rates.

Ah, the stench! And the flies! Gross!

They also do not mention, while demanding you give them money to Save The Elephant, that African and Asian elephants are the last two species of around a dozen examples which flourished in the ice age, including the wooly mammoth and the mastodon, big eaters in North America. They also don't mention that elephants have some of the least efficient digestion since the dinosaurs. They eat acres of vegetation per day, like gluttons, and have been tied to serious deforestation and devastation in Africa because they are both hungry and vicious. Like all mammal species they tend to breed beyond the carrying capacity of their food supply. Evolution favors unbalanced breeding strategies.

 

A wag from the Conservative National Review online magazine, perhaps teasing, suggested importing herds of elephants from Africa to "save them", and set them loose in the Western states, the dry arid, and somewhat lacking in things to eat, Western states. I'm going to vote NO on that idea.

 

Noted professional hunter Peter Capstick places the Elephant in his top 5 species which should be eradicated because elephants are stupid, mean, and tend to violently thrash to death any human that gets close to them. They have very thick skin so barbed wire won't contain them, and cyclone fencing is hardly an obstacle either. They won't stay put. They'll go where the food is. Farmer's fields. An adult elephant can devour 4 acres a day.

 

Elephants are not nice. Despite your childhood memories of circuses and zoos, an elephant thinks of a human as a screaming squishy toy to crush under its knees, grasp by a limb with its trunk and beat against a tree, or pull the arms and legs off like a screaming, blood fountaining fly. Humans have witnessed rampages by elephants in a bad mood. Lots of people have been killed like this, lots of people have witnessed the violent deaths, and no, I am NOT joking. It's not good TV, and Africans don't have camera phones so current deaths aren't fun internet videos. So importing elephants to a continent where our indian predecessors/ancestors carefully wiped them out to make North America safe for people? Not a good idea to undo their hard work. 

 

The comment in the article regarding turning elephants into livestock needs to be addressed. Yes, bison do get some use as livestock, now that they've been brought back from the brink, but ground bison isn't very good, and ground beef tastes better. Remember the effort to grow ostriches for meat? Yeah, that was a fad. Bison is too expensive and tasteless to be good eating. Beef tastes better. The pioneers killed off the bison because they ignored fences, and they had enough problems with indian attacks and drought and tornadoes. If Elephants are brought back to North America, they'll be a menace, and anyone sensible will slaughter them. I haven't heard good things about elephant meat being edible. Chicken is better for you. Beef tastes better, and we can identify the parasites and prevent those animals being served to us like food. African animals have a minimum of four (4) major parasite infections at any given time. If you import them, the herd will bring its parasites here. That's not a good thing. There are many species in Africa with so many parasites nobody eats them. Great Kudu for example is writhing with worms. Same with Black Bears and Raccoons and Opossums. They eat dirt, and parasite eggs in the dirt, and are full of worms. Eating them is a really bad idea. I suspect elephant meat is likewise dangerous and not worth anything. And turning that meat into pet food? The parasites will get into your pets, which will then migrate to you when you care for them. That's a bad thing. Parasites are species specific. They chew through organs looking for the spot they evolved to live in, using a genetically passed down "map" of the animal interior. That's a big downside of sushi. The fish parasites wiggle around and can't find their home, so keep searching, multiplying, and eating your organs and brain. Gross. This explains why Africans get so nuts. Eat some parasites, brain gets gnawed, go crazy and violent long enough to start a really bad civil war. Cats have parasites too. They get into your eyes, through your tear ducts. And make you nuts. A considerable number of people in jail are full of these cat bugs. I won't show you any videos of parasites. They turn my stomach.  

 

If they import Elephants, I think I'll see if I can't support teams to direct them into the suburbs where the rampages will change public opinion on how cute and cuddly elephants are. Peter Hathaway Capstick favored .375 H&H BRNO Magnum Mauser for lions, and .416 Holland and Holland double rifle for elephant, for but I suspect a good 3D study of elephant anatomy will enable a serious .338 WinMag semi-auto, something designed for the recoil and gas action pressures, to punch into its brain. High pressure .270 Winchesters, an early .270 Magnum or 7mm Magnum, aimed at the right spot with a deep penetration 180-190 grain bullet designed for about 14 inches of wood without coming apart, will do the job if you hit the brain. If you miss the elephant will tear you apart. Just aim right. A lot of hunters died trying to do Bell's expert shooting. This is the right answer to elephants. Only a truck mounted belt-fed M2 Browning machinegun would be better. Giving Elephants pasture in America and expecting them to stay put? That's nuts.

 

I'm sure that someday some mad sadistic bioengineer will use mammoth hair and ivory to resynthesize the DNA into a viable herd of the beasts, and set them loose in Canada. A couple hundred should do. At first, they'll be cute and cuddly and darlings of the internet. But then they'll migrate and cause a fuss and eventually they'll be wrecking stuff, attacking people, causing traffic jams in Chicago, and Green Bay and Milwaukee, and otherwise become a huge nuisance and threat to human life. The bioengineers will quickly build herds of Mastodons, the North American elephant of the Southwest and Great Basin, and then the Sabercat, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Pumas on steroids to hunt them (and us). Why can't they do good things instead?

 

What would I prefer? Refill the Ogallala Aquifer with water diverted from the Frasier River in Canada, via aqueduct. That will get several million farms in the Dakotas and Nebraska back into production, and provide homes and livings for Americans instead of crowding them into cities surrounded by rampaging herds of extinct vicious animals.

Bass Fishing. Lots of Bass fishing. And wild migratory bird sanctuary. And mosquitoes.

 

I think we should also build an aqueduct to carry water through Eastern Oregon and down into northern and central Nevada, then refill Lake Lahontan and have a real estate boom, both for the lake and agriculture there. Think of all the fishing resorts in a lake bigger than New Jersey. And there's many lakes worth refilling in Eastern Oregon too, including proper water into the dry lakes up there now. This would be really good for that interior desert and offers a lot of places to live for our future population. This would also provide a lot of jobs, building both aqueducts. A pity the current president has ruined relations with Canada.