It's a jungle out there

This is Limpo the Elephant. See that nasty kink in his rear left leg? When Limpo was an unnamed baby elephant otherwise undifferentiated from the other little bundles of elephant joy, he was assaulted by an angry rhino, who had taken exception to him for a reason that probably only the elephants remember. Maybe he waved his trunk in an insulting fashion at the waterhole, or something.

The rhino in question went completely balllistic and though Limpo managed to escape with his life, his leg was severely damaged. They feared that the damage might be fatal, but he healed up alright and was able to move about and feed himself. Crisis over. Years went by, Limpo limped and ate and ate and limped and grew and grew and behaved in a generally elephantine fashion, as befitting a strong young elephant in his prime.

Then one day, Limpo went out and found the nearest rhino and beat it to death.

Well, the park people thought, its a jungle out there. Or a veldt, anyway. Shit happens. Disputes occur, hormones rage, tempers flare. Occasional tragedies ensue. A little while later, though, he did it again. Another rhino bites the dust. As months stretched into years, the park people realised that this was not a simple, straightforward crime of passion. As the death toll mounted, they realised they had a serial killer on their hands. Limpo was waging a one-elephant war on the rhino race. It was rhino-cide on a grand scale.

By the time the fifteenth rhino had died a violent and bloody death, capital punishment must have been looking like a pretty good option. Can't have your tourists coming across murder scenes when they are out to take their pretty pictures of the Big Five. Instead, though, they brought in a heavy hitter, in the form of in another elephant. A chilled old elephant from further North. An elephant with gravitas and wisdom. An elephant carrying the weight of a great many years and thus, seniority. Most important of all, The Grand Old Elephant Of The North got along extraordinarily well with rhinos.

In what must be one of the world's all-time greatest triumphs of criminal rehabilitation, after the two elephants had spent some time together, the slaughter ended. The old elephant eventually went back home, and Limpo, as far as anyone knows, hasn't harmed a hair on the rhino's head since.

I love a happy ending.

P.S. apologies to the people I sent photos to referring to 'hippo-cide': it was a slip of the brain.