An elephant in New York

We went for a visit to the United Nations Headquarters (UN HQs) in New York and, after visiting the building we went to admire the sight and scent of the roses at the garden and the view. Then it happened. Our trained eyes spotted a large elephant among the bushes and then they opened wide when it started moving towards us! Immediately, King Kong came to mind…

Well, that start for the post was only to attract the readers’ attention!

However, a life size of a bull elephant does exist and it stands at the UN HQs. It is a bronze cast donated jointly by Kenya, Namibia, and Nepal. Although it seems logical to me that Kenya and Namibia would do such a thing, Nepal was more surprising. However, I should have known that the country has over 200 wild elephants and another 250 captive ones (1). In addition, Nepal has a “wildlife diplomacy” an important part of the country’s soft-power foreign policy (2).

Mihail Simeonov (3) hatched the rather outlandish idea of casting a sleeping elephant in Africa and the account of the events that followed is based on his publication (4).

About 1978, he created the Cast the Sleeping Elephant Trust. The founding document explores “…the philosophical and practical implications of man’s dominance over Nature and the need to readdress and to completely rethink that link to Nature.” The interested reader can find more information in Mihail´s publication.

For the next couple of years, until the cast was actually made on 19 March 1980, Mihail gradually managed to get Kenya´s permission to do the job there. Subsequently, he convinced Kelco, a division of the Merck Corporation, to donate one thousand pounds of alginate, the paste used by dentists to prepare teeth moulds amonmg other medical uses. This was important as other cast methods were not suitable for various reasons and Mihail did not wish to harm the animal.

After overcoming several other issues, Mihail travelled to Kenya where, with Kenyan government support, a suitable wild bull was found at Ol Pejeta (5) and tranquilized. After 2 hours of 20 people working, the cast was completed and the elephant walked away unharmed.

After 5 more years the work was completed and the plaster version exhibited at a gallery in New York. Finally, in 1986, Kenya agreed to donate it to the United Nations. Namibia joined Kenya two hours after its independence and, later, Nepal also agreed to join in.

A number of proclamations from the author and the donor governments on the right for the elephants to exist for eternity ensued and the bronze elephant weighing over 3 tonnes was finally completed at a foundry in NY and, after considering other options, transported by flat bed truck to the UN HQs to be finally placed at the northwest corner of the North Garden.

But there was a snag: the size of the elephant penis!

This subject was treated at a meeting of the Secretariat on 17 November 1998, just one day before it was going to be unveiled. A senior UN official was worried about the size of the penis and its possible negative impact on children visiting the UN so, eventually, after abandoning the idea of plastic surgery on the offending part, it was decided to dissimulate it by planting bushes around the statue to hide it from view! This work actually ended minutes before its inauguration by SG Kofi Annan on 18 November (6), more than 28 years after the casting took place.

First sighting.
Bushes have grown by now.
A view of the offending part.

(1) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398959917_Asian_elephants_and_their_status_in_Nepal_a_review#fullTextFileContent Retrieved on 21 May 2026.

(2) https://diplomatnepal.com/feature/wildlife-diplomacy-shifting-from-rhinos-to-elephants/ Retrieved on 21 May 2026.

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihail_Simeonov

(4) https://www.scribd.com/doc/33842662/CAST-THE-SLEEPING-ELEPHANT Retrieved on 21 May 2026.

(5) https://www.olpejetaconservancy.org/ Retrieved on 22 May 2026.

(6) https://press.un.org/en/1998/19981118.sgsm6800.html#:~:text=A%20former%20Governor%20of%20Brazil’s,up%20and%20ask%20for%20peanuts. Retrieved on 21 May 2026.

What on earth!? (29)

Walking in our farm I came across a hammock I did not know we had! I got closer and realized that in fact I was looking at the most extraordinary spiderweb I have seen!

Well, perhaps I exaggerated a bit but it was really spectacular! The thin threads were highlighted by the drops left by a recent shower, creating the effect of a true net.

Pictures by Mabel de Castro.

Wet creatures’ day

Before I describe the events of the title, I wish to explain why I have been absent from the blog. Luckily, it was not a health issue but a literary one.

A few years back, I hatched the idea of writing a historical fiction novel, without realizing what kind of work this implied. In short, the result was that all my spare time was taken by the writing as I needed to get fully immersed in the work to be able to make sense of it! Fortunately, although is not yet completed, the novel is suffciently advanced by now and, while the editor works on the final touches, I have some spare time to get back to my neglected blog. (If I manage to publish the novel I will let you know!)

So, here we go.

As every year at this time, we are spending time in Salta at our small “wildlife” farm. We have had sustained rain for the last week and yesterday there was a break and we went out to explore the surroundings and to assess any damage the rain may have caused to our entrance road,. We also needed to see if the small stream that usually looks harmless but gets quite lively with the rains, had damaged our fording place.

The water was still running quite fast but our road had suffered no damage. While checking it, we came across a sight we do not see very often.

Rococo

The toad was there for a purpose, probably to get some insects. As soon as we looked another way, it quickly disappeared.

After this distraction, we decided to check our water well as, when there is a lot of rain, the water surges up submerging the pump and ruining it.

Luckily, the pump was still way above the water but, we found another unexpected event. A small snake, probably a brown “culebra” (Paraphimophis rustica) had fallen in the water and it was swimming around without much chance of claimbing the vertical and smooth wall.

A rescue operation was organized.

After a tricky “fishing” exercise, the snake was finally retrieved and released.

What on earth!? (28)

I watched “Scarface”, a movie with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer (among others) about 40 years back while still in Kenya and, just to confirm that I am getting to the fossil state, we rented a video from a library somewhere in Nairobi.

As I have forgotten the plot I decided to have another go at it as I found it in Netflix. As often happens, after a while, I started remembering it and, somehow, after the first hour, I was loosing interest. I was about to stop it when I was surprised by what I heard! This was not another of the rarther abundant bad words in the movie but some other sound that I found, somehow out of place!

The scene in question takes place in Cochabamba (Bolivia) when Tony Montana (Pacino) is discussing a drug deal with Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar) the producer of the cocaine. While they are finalizing the deal, seated in Sosa´s mansion, between a few “f” words, I, somehow, heard the call of a bird with which I am very familiar with.

Nothing wrong with that you may think. However, the bird, as far as I know, only occurs in Africa!

Below I embedded the relevant part of the movie that, luckily, it was already selected by “Popcorn Picks”, a YouTube video channel to who I give credit (I would not know how to extract a piece of a movie).

I regret thatr this is a rather violent moment of the film and, to avoid you watching this, I recommend you to go almost to the end (5:54) in the clip below and then, again around 5:57 just when Sosa tells Tony “I only tell you one time, don´t f… with me Tony”.

Despite other background noises and the music, I believe that I hear the call of the red-chested cuckoo or rain bird (Cuculus solitarius), also known in South Africa as “”Piet-my-vrou”, an onomatopeic name that mimicks it call that you can hear below:

Embedded from YouTube (credit: Birding with Lynette Rudman).

In my surprise, trying to see where this part of the movie was filmed, I consulted https://www.imdb.com where abundant information on “Scarface” is found. I learnt there that the scene in question was filmed at 656 Park Lane, Santa Barbara, California, USA, not an area where you expect to find a rain bird. However, another cuckoo, the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus), is present there but its call is totally different.

I admit that I can be mistaken but I find this an unusual and interesting find for being totaly unexpected. So, how could we explain it? I see a few options, including that what I heard was just a combination of other bird sounds that, somehow, mimicked the rain bird. Another, more likely, is that one of the aviaries (there are a few in Santa Barbara) or a private individual nearby was keeping a red-chested cuckoo. The final possibility is that the film makers used background sounds from their sound library, irrespective of its origin.

I just consider this as an unusual event that we would probably never unravel but I will appreciate any ideas or information you may have.

What on earth!? (27) – explained

It took a few hours but then the answer for what appeared to be a botanical mistery was finally found. The leaf was chewed by some beast before it opened fully, while it was rolled up and tender!

I promise you that the revelation came to me after a short late summer siesta under the wisteria but I am still embarrassed that I did not think of the explanation earlier!

What on earth!? (27)

While walking through our garden around the house in the small farm we have in Salta, Argentina, avoiding spiderwebs, I entered an area of thicker vegetation that I usually avoid. There there are a number of wild and garden plants. Among these, the Indian shot (Canna indica) is a very common plant in this area and, as many others, its leaves are eaten by a number of insects such as caterpillars, leaf-cutting ants, grasshoppers and others that are rather abundant in this part of the world.

We are used to loose plants to insects and fruits to birds but we take it as “sharing” as we like the birds and we do not use pesticides, except to control mosquitoes.

We have seen many eaten leaves but nothing like what I found today:

As much as I thought how this leaf was eaten in such a pattern, I have failed and I am embarrassed to admit that a caterpillar with the hicups is the only one that makes sense to me at the moment!

Spot the beast 84

I have not published a “Spot” for a while. I found this one that I found in our farm in Salta, Argentina a while ago and that went “unspotted” until today! Can you see it?

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If its antennae did not give it away, the colour of the inner part of the wings will now!

What on earth!? (26)

We spotted this sign at Skukuza Camp in the Kruger National Park. One would have thought that, if there was a tree that gives sausages, instead of such a sign there would be one promoting the sale of fried ones or at least a fridge to collect them for later!

But these are the fruits of the aptly named sausage tree (Kigelia africana), solid fruits that could weigh over 10 kg although more often less than that but that, if they fall on your head, they could give you a headache, perhaps worse than if they fall on the bonnet of your car!

Camping at risk of falling sausages!

The sausages that fall are consumed by a variety of animals, including humans that use them for flavouring “pombe” the local beer in Kenya.

Before that, it produces beautiful scarlet flowers that are not only decorative but also animal food. This young baboon is picking the best sweet bits!

Leucistic dove?

Several species of doves occur in Mana Pools National Park in Zimbabwe. Some of them such as the Ring-necked Dove (Streptopelia capicola) is frequently ignored because of its abundance.

During one of our visits to the park in September 2018, among a flock of these doves we spotted one that did not quite match the expected bird, so we looked at it more carefully.

From a distance, its plumage appeared paler that its companions and it looked “washed” in certain areas of its body.

We had seen leucism before (See: https://bushsnob.com/2017/01/05/odd-bird/) and I have described the phenomenon as follows: “Animal coloration can deviate from the standard, from complete melanism to albinism. Leucism (leukism) is one of the intermediate forms defined as a phenotype resulting from blemishes in pigment cell differentiation during development with the consequence that the entire animal or patches of its body being white as they lack the cells capable of making pigment”.

I believe that what we observed this time is a case of “dilution”, a condition where the plumage colour often appears ‘washed out’ (i.e. ‘diluted’). In dilution, melanin cells are present (unlike in leucistic birds) but produce less pigment than normal. Clearly, humans need to classify everything!

What on earth?! (25)

In September 2019, while walking through the grounds of the now defunct Kingdom hotel at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, we observed a monitor lizard eating what looked like a fruit-eating bat.

Unfortunately, we did not see if the bat was caught while alive or the monitor was feeding on a dead bat found on the ground of the hotel. The monitor consumed the entire bat.

A Google search indicated that this is not an unusual event and that both snakes and lizards are known to predate on bats all over the world.