Butler did it

I didn't even know there was a retirement village for aging female elephants, but when I saw this story on Facebook, originally from CBS News, I checked it out and hung with it, because of the atrocious pun in the very first lines (elephants packing their derms?  Worthy of me at my most pun-ishing) and I'm glad I did.

Click on the story, please, and check it out if you have a couple of minutes.  The elephants pair up in a sort of huge buddy system, and one of them wound up with a buddy who is decidedly non-elephantine.

Funny thing about animals, non-domestic variety.  You see them roaming around the neighborhood and they are having a really good time.  Just recently, here at the Lazy 'C' Ranch, we had a family of wrens nest for a while and fly off with their new hatchlings, and then a mama rabbit dug a little pit in the mulch beneath the crabapple tree, and within days, four little Bugs Bunnies were the darlings of the neighborhood.  None of these animals have internet access, high-fructose corn syrup, or Pat Robertson's maniacal bleatings in their lives.

And they are better off for it!

Samuel Butler

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

There was a fellow from England, name of Samuel Butler, who said two things that I think are worthy of thinking over.  It was he who pointed out that "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all,"  which turned Tennyson's "Better to have loved and love than never to have loved at all" right on its ear.

But keep this Butler quote in mind also..

"Man is the only animal that laughs, and has a state legislature."

And think of how happy that squirrel who just ran down your street is about that!

Alfred, Lord Neuman