Green elephants!

I promised you a green elephant and here it is. You waited a long time.
It was a lot faster to tat the green elephant than to write this post so I hope you enjoy it.
I was pleasantly suprised at the response to my elephants and Dublin post, so many of you collect elephants and regard them with so much affection.....I suppose that's not suprising they are amazing.

Do I here you asking 'Why a green elephant?' Well the answer is partly that it's a topiary elephant and partly that it's 'green' in a 'save the planet' context!



The thread is my own hand dyed stuff. It was supposed to resemble box (Buxus) most commonly used for topiary..it wasn't quite as good as I would have liked but I wanted to do this this year not when I reached perfection!!

A little bit of trunk variation from Inga Madsens wonderful pattern.

So now you should be wondering why a topiary elephant can help save the planet...or the elephants that live on it at least.

The story begins earlier this year when two Americans (Topiary Joe) flew over to the small West Cork town of Clonakilty to build a herd of life size elephants.
The three dimensional elephants are made of a steel frame made from recycled cars and covered in plastic topiary. the local community helped with the cladding and painting.
The herd consists of 13 elephants, the leader Tusker is 11 ft tall and he is followed by a range of adults and babies.

They began their tour in May in Inchydoney,West Cork, perched on a headland looking out to sea and must have looked splendid.

The Survival Tour came from an idea by the conservation charity called Elephant Family and the Royal Parks Foundation and The World Land Trust.
The aim is to raise funds to help to purchase a 6.5km by 1.5 area in Kerala in India which connects two key pockets of forest. It will provide a safe migratory route for up to 3,000 Asian elephants. The loss of so many forested areas in India may well lead to the extinction of the elephants, tigers and other animals that are teetering on the edge of extinction.

The tour takes in Dublin (in the Pheonix Park),then to England to Windsor, Royal Parks in London, Selfridges department store in London then back to Ireland to an arts and music festival in Co Laois and finally in September they move to Brighton, England.

Before we had chance to see them in West Cork, just as we were about to go on holiday we heard that they had come to our Wildlife Park at Fota for just two days.

No time to spare but I had to see these elephants and I was not disappointed, there they were under the large trees in the middle of the park.



This is me just to give you an impression of the size (and yes I am wearing blue!)and this isn't even the largest elephant.



The babies were delightful.



We don't have any elephants in our Wildlife Park, each 'zoo' in Ireland specialises in breeding certain animals. So it was super to see the elephants with the other animals in the back ground, our giraffes, zebras and ostriches.



The alpaca herd like so many of the animals are free to wander in the park and were not impressed by the elephants.



Too many photos I know but it was hard to choose.



Take a closer look ot the plastic clover like foliage on this display.



The photo album showed the construction of the elephants.



With a lot of help from photoshop here is my tatted impression of the topiary elephant herd.



More info and super photos of the Survival Tour are here and here for a fabulous flickr slide show.

Meanwhile in the Wildlife park it was just another day for the animals.
We have a large breeding population of cheetahs.



We also breed European Bison, some of which have recently been returned to Poland to the wild.



We have recently had a baby pure Rothschild's Giraffe born. Most giraffes in captivity are hybrids.



You can just see the elephant herd in the background.

Hope you enjoyed this little peep into the world of green elephants!