Animals galore!

Finally after weeks I've seen an elephant! The Vinayagar (Ganesh) temple sometimes has an elephant( ya know 'cause Ganesh is elephant-headed) waiting in front of the door, just standing there being fed and gawked at. Daddy had seen the elephant earlier that week and so we decided to go check. When we get there we see everybody pushing and shoving themselves through the motorcycle barricades, but of course this is typical Indian behavior, nothing special. But when we get through the barricades, there she is, a 10 ft high elephant. She's standing on a wooden platform, her face is decorated with blue, white, red, purple and yellow face chalk. Around her feet silver anklets hang, jingling as she moves, and around her neck she wears a gold chain, attached to which is a plaque carrying her name, Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth.



Also, I've now seen two wild, male peacock. The first was in a field. He was displaying. For those of you who have seen peacocks at zoos, wild peacocks are much, MUCH bigger. He was four feet tall, and he had a FIVE FOOT LONG TAIL! Also, peacocks can jump much higher than you would expect them to be able to. He jumped to the top of a meter high fence! He didn't even flap his wings, he just jumped. The second one was on the side of the road, scratching at the ground. It was cool to watch him eat. This one was smaller though, maybe 2 and a half feet. He had about a 4 ft tail.