Friday, May 16, 2008

ON ELEPHANTS AND MOTHERS

Post Mother's Day post.

Reading Jodi Piccoult's latest offering "Change of Heart". I come across this extract...

"I would tell Claire about the elephants when she woke up, I decided. About a country where mothers and daughters walked side by side for years with their aunts and sisters. About how elephants were either right-handed or left-handed. How they could find their way home years after they'd left.
Here's what I wouldn't tell Claire, ever: That elephants know when they're close to dying, and they make their way to a riverbed for nature to take its course. That elephants bury their dead, and grieve. That naturalists have seen a mother elephant carry a dead calf for miles, cradled in her trunk, unwilling and unable to let it go."

Interesting, that, about elephants.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

very much so I never knew that. I was wondering about her latest book.

Penny said...

It would make me cry to see that.