Whodunnit? An Elephant mystery - a true story!

It was a dark night in Bangkok, Thailand. Somsak Klangkaew, 55, had left his friends and gone into the elephant compound where some 20 elephants had been tethered together overnight. They were part of a troupe for the recent international AIDS conference, the elephantine representatives for safe sex presumably among promiscuous or intraveneous drug using pachyderms.

Somsak had told his fellow card playing Mahouts that he would gather some herbs for his noodle soup from the elephants food supply and assured them that he would only be gone a minute or two.

He never returned.

Concerned, his fellow Mahouts went searching for him only to find his mangled, trampled and decidely flat body instead, spread out like tomatoe paste all over the elephant compound. Something was a-foot.

The suspicion immediately fell upon Sud Lor, a 22 year old bull whose name means Absolutely Handsome.
Being the prime suspect, for he was known to be tempremental,he was taken in for interrogation immediately. Unsurprisingly Sud Lor was not particularlarly forthcoming with testimony however, and few understood his trumpeting, harrumphs or grunts, even when subjected to harsh spotlights and the good cop bad cop techniques. Little progress was being made, there was nothing else for it, forensics were called.

Meanwhile, Sompast Meepan, the Mahout of Sud Lor, protested his old friends innocence, and at one stage lied down in front of the tusks of the mighty Sud Lor and bade him kill him there and then as proof of Sud's ill-deserved reputation. Instead, Sud Lor knelt and as gently as an elephant could, carressed his Mahout and cried at his Sompasts obvious distress.

The police were unconvinced at the theatrics betwen this closest of couples however. They insisted on footprinting Sud Lor and taking DNA samples from his curled tusks. Sud Lot complied. The world waited on the results.

Sud Lor was innocent and Sompast after hugging his life long companion and friend went straight to the nearest Wat or temple and offered up a prayer of thanks to the Buddha.

The police were now genuinely puzzled. Scratching their heads they thopught if not Sud Lor, then who? Having released Sud Lor, they impounded all of the other 19 elephants and took footprints from each and every one of them. Who was the guily one?

With the shifty looking lot of elephants on parade, it was hard to tell who was responsible for this terrible murder. But astonishingly, the forensics came back blank. None of the elephants could have been responsible. Every elephant in the compound was cleared and were free to go.

It became evident to the police that whatever elephant had killed Sompast, for it most certainly was an elephant, it was not one in that compound that evening.

So somewhere, roaming the streets of Bangkok, probably wearing a pair of dark shades and a hooded longcoat, there is a rogue elephant, hanging around in darkened alleways, on the run from the law.

He can be recognised by an unusually long nose, oversized molars and a tendency to occasionally trumpet out loud.

Do not approach him, he is dangerous. Contact the police immediately.

yechydda,