The people will run

"So how do you know if an elephant is going crazy?"
"Oh well the people will run."

This is probably one of the funniest conversations I've had in a while. Yesterday a group of us went to a Perahera in a rural village about 45 minutes north with the Mobile Vet Unit, a division of the Millennium Elephant Foundation. The elephant vet, Dr. D, goes to Peraheras with some of his vet students to supervise and make sure that if any of the elephants goes crazy they can be tranquilized. Apparently one in ten Peraheras has some sort of incident, which is understandable given how loud and stressful a Perahera could be to an elephant. The one we went to yesterday had 5 elephants in the parade and many different groups of male and female dancers. The most important elephant carries a relic on his back and is usually the most colorful and at the front of the parade. Since it was a small village most of the people had probably never seen a white person before so we got stared at more than usual to the point where some of the dancers would stop mid-dance just to gawk at us. I was surprised that the vet with the tranquilizer gun does not ride along with the parade, so I asked him naturally how he could tell when something went wrong (hence the title of this entry).

On another note, we had our first "party" a couple of nights ago up at the house with some of the MEF staff. It was basically a bar be que with alcohol, a nice change of pace from our usual dinner. I finally tried some Arrack, which is very smooth until it hits your stomach and feels very much like you've swallowed a ball of fire. The owner of the place was in rare form after a couple of drinks, which was actually quite amusing to most of us. But because we all had to get up at 5:30 to do a vet check the next morning we all had an early night and excused ourselves around 9:30. This place really takes it out of you even when you aren't doing that much during the day.