By the time "Oh, Comely" finally came and climaxed, the fight had been broken up, and I was crying in the elephant bellows of the brass and Jeff Mangum's high-pitched Irish train cry.
"From a distance, only another mother could have told that she was crying," Schappell writes in "Elephant," about two women taking tentative steps toward friendship.
The planning professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Orlando dos Santos Junior, sees dire conflict ahead in the clash between spending on white elephants and crying needs elsewhere in the city – producing what he calls "an agony of disappointed loyalties".
"If elephants' cries for justice cannot be heard in Washington, maybe the elephant should no longer be used to symbolize democracy".
Although crying has been documented in apes, elephants and even camels, it seems that only humans produce emotional tears, and it is only in humans that crying behaviours persist into adulthood.
"The day that we offloaded those elephants, some people stood there crying," said Mr. van Houven, who is also a professor of wildlife management at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
The large expanses of gray, rippling like the skin of an elephant, just cry out to be caressed.
"I look like a big fat elephant!" she cries out, attracting more than a few glances in the Condé Nast canteen.
Two days ago, it was the elephant that cried actual tears when it was freed from the cruel spiked chains that had held it captive for years.
