Thank you to the Idaho Press-Tribune for publishing this story of a night-time encounter between a car and an elephant. It’s pretty wonderful.
Bill Carpenter, driving with his wife through the darkness, nearly hit an elephant:
“Didn’t have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road,” driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. “At the very last second I said, ‘Elephant!’ “
The elephant blended in with the road? Really? I don’t know if I’m convinced by the road-being-a-perfect-camouflage-for-an-elephant theory. But even better is the random screaming of “Elephant!” and hoping for the best. As though if you identify something, it will move. Anyway, it continues:
“So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us,” he said. “We’d have been history.”
No, Hanna is not his wife. I’m not sure who Hanna is. But I did find this. And this. But that’s distracting us from the matter in hand.
Carpenter joked about being involved in such a bizarre accident on what is usually a peaceful church night.
“I don’t know what was in the wine, but it must have been pretty strong,” he said.
Ah, the church wine. Of course. Elephant-inducing.