Pachydermophobia!

A few things to remember before you are battered to death by a wild elephant


There are two opinions on elephants with respect to their behaviour. Some say they are foul-tempered creatures while others contend that they are the gentlest of animals that resort to violence only when left with no option. Whatever be the case, elephants have to be respected for their bulk and what they can do with it.


Hailing as I do from Kerala, a land famous for elephants used to bear temple idols in ceremonial processions, I have heard of instances where elephants have turned rogue and killed their mahouts. Numerous videos have been shown on television of mahouts picked up, pounded and thrown around like ragdolls. There have been instances where motorists on national highways cutting through forests have been chased and often killed by elephants. Even before I became interested in birding and wildlife, elephants have given me a slight weakness in the knees.

The big one from Nagarhole with the broken chain

My first close encounter was in Nagarahole National Park, Karnataka. I was driving with three friends along a narrow road just outside the sanctuary when we saw a tusker (with easily the largest tusks I have seen on an Asian elephant) coming right towards us along the center of the road. We put the engine in neutral and waited. It was a domesticated elephant and trailed a broken chain from its front leg. To make things worse, it appeared as if this elephant was in "musth" - a mating urge due to which they go near-berserk, more so if it has not had access to a female elephant (in Africa male elephants in heat are rumoured to mount rhinos in desperation with fatal results for the rhinos, of course). 

We switched off the engine and waited for it to pass and noted that a tractor crammed with people had stopped behind us. We held our breath, having rolled up the windows as the elephant stopped right in front of us. After what felt like eternity, it passed our vehicle. We switched on the engine and, as silently as we could, moved ahead and stopped a safe 50 metres away and looked back. The elephant started walking towards the tractor. Every single person aboard it jumped off and ran helter-skelter. The elephant observed the tractor for a while and walked off, much to everyone's relief.

A mother and calf crossing the road at Chinnar

The second instance was in Chinnar, Kerala. We had overtaken a Kerala-registered car with a group of noisy guys who appeared to be drunk. Ahead we saw a a group of elephants, mostly cows and calves. We stopped at a respectful distance as they crossed the road and once they had passed, we went past them without making any noise. We could hear the noisy group coming along behind us and we were pretty sure they would vex the elephants, so we moved further ahead. 

As expected the noisy group's car came tearing through the forest road and a few minutes later the guys, seeing us drive slowly, screamed, "Hey... Elephant elephant, danger danger!" What could have happened with them is anybody's guess.

Elephants can either mock-charge or charge for real. The mock charge is a warning, an indication of the animal's irritation at being disturbed. The elephant does everything to make the charge appear authentic: Pounding footfalls, kicking up dust, ears fanned out, trunk raised... 


The real charge is a lightning-quick strike relatively devoid of show. The elephant runs up to you - if the ears are not fanned out and if the trunk is held down, you can tell it is not a mock charge - and would continue running over you. You need a miracle to survive. A mock charge can turn into a real charge any time. You can read (and see) more on elephant charges here in an encounter by my friend Dhaval Momaya.

Little ones like this might be cute, but never try to approach them as momma will be around

Both these encounters were experienced in the relative safety of a car but the the ones in Parambikulam, Kerala was more unnerving because we were on foot. Beej , Sahastra, Rohit and I had started our 18 km tramway trek along with a forest guard. Barely half a kilometre into our trek we saw an elephant herd with females and calves beside the road. 

Aadhan, the forest guard, whispered to us to be silent and told us that elephants don't like human noise and are likely to be provoked into attacking if they heard us talk. A tribesman who was with us tapped a nearby tree trunk three times with his bamboo walking stick. The sound carried in a forest that had barely woken up. The elephants looked back, saw us and began moving away from the road. It was evidently an exhibition of mutual respect and understanding. I let go of the breath I was holding and raced off after the others...

The herd at Parambikulam

On our return, we heard loud noises of bamboo stalks snapping about 10 metres ahead to the right of our path. Our second guide Manoharan asked Aadhan to wait with us, motioning us to stay silent. He tiptoed to the source of the sound, peeped into the woods and came back looking grave. He then veered off the trail into the bushes and asked us to follow quietly. Bewildered, we entered the forest in the opposite direction of the noise, off the road, and walked parallel to the road for almost half a kilometer, after which we joined the road again. Back on the road, Manoharan said the elephant was an "Ottayan", referring to a lone tusker. These animals are known for their foul temper. Tapping the tree trunk would have only earned us a charge!

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you encounter an elephant or a herd:

1. Keep your distance, always
2. Avoid white and other bright colors as seeing this attracts their (unwanted) attention
3. Avoid making noise and refrain from conversation
4. An elephant that means business can outrun the fastest of humans, so never assume that you can beat these bulky beings by fleeing at the last moment
5. Be it a mock charge or a real charge, both mean that you have encroached into the elephant's comfort zone. It wants you out of there. Obey. 

Text and photos by Sandeep Somasekharan

All rights reserved

Still in love with elephants even after reading this post?! You might want to read: 

• When Stumpy almost cost us the World Cup
• When the elephant played peekaboo

When Stumpy almost cost us the World Cup!

Never mix cricket and a jungle adventure, the World Cup's mascot seemed to tell us!

Setting out on the bird trail

Lopsided finances can crush a budget birding trip when one member of the party considers opting out. Harder still when the reason for his abandonment of our greater purpose is to watch a cricket match. Well, we know retrospectively that this was no ordinary game. And we know who won. But between the watching and the winning lies a tale.


Cellular signals don't trouble the Kulgi Nature Camp in Dandeli-Anshi Tiger Reserve. Not even BSNL -- well, not unless your phone happens to point northeast at a particular angle that takes three hours to determine accurately. It's really not worth the effort, because that half-arsed bar of connectivity vanishes as soon as you pick up the handset. But there is a colour television set in the common room here and a quorum of cricket enthusiasts among the guests -- where is that hard to find? And so Satish, who had almost stayed back in Bangalore to cheer for the nation, found himself couch-potatoed stolidly before the television set, a musty-smelling towel spread territorially over the back of his PVC deck chair. I doubt if he even made time for the demands of his bladder. The rest of us -- Arun, Andy, Sahastra and I -- set out for a little walk in the jungle at 5 pm. We took the Bird Trail, one of two short walks (the other is the Timber Trail) that originate at the camp. 

The drab dry forest was gorgeous

At this time of the year, the dry deciduous forests of Dandeli are bare and brown. Not that we were complaining. The thin foliage allowed for penetrating views though the duller birds revelled in the camouflage it offered. We had already seen a White-bellied Woodpecker twice and were looking forward to exhaust the hornbills on our checklist. Walking down the bird trail, we were distracted by an incontinent langur (missing its scented shower by a whisker) and two brainfever birds. A little later, a Jungle Owlet and a Rufous Woodpecker occupied our attention. 

A Harvestman (Opiliones) watches us from a tree bark

We had already walked too far down the trail as the sun began to set behind the trees. And yes, we had left the camp when Mahela and Sanga were holding the flag aloft for Sri Lanka and, though I could have gone ahead and birded some more, patriotic pressure was building within the troops to return and watch the Indian innings unfold. Sahastra led the retreat from the bird trail and we shuffled noisily along the path, which was strewn with a rustling carpet of dry leaves, carelessly crushing red bugs underfoot.


Arun suddenly alerted us to another sound -- the cracking of bamboo stumps. Only one creature (aside from the Giant Panda, perhaps?) was capable of making that noise. To our luck, the leafless jungle aided visibility. In the crackling dry undergrowth we discerned the hunched shapes of elephants. A prime wildlife sighting no doubt, but rather intimidating at a distance of 100 metres. We stood there on wobbly knees and considered the odds -- what if they attacked? Run in zig-zag formation, went an old jungle saying. Yes, yes... as if we had an option in this tangled forest. Another fear creased my brow: Were we upwind or downwind from the beasts? The only way to find out was to break wind and risk it. Finally, we exercised option three: Shut up and wait it out. 

There were six -- three cows including a matriarch, and three calves of which one young chap had already sprouted tusks. If they chose to use force, this was going to be a formidable army. Another creature then joined the gazing party. Separated from its herd, a young deer (opinions, in the failing light, were divided as to whether it was a spotted deer or a barking deer) pranced anxiously through the thicket across our path and then, upon spotting us, froze and stared. My bowels were about to mutiny, for an alarm call from this lax little herbivore could spell our doom. At the end of a long and tense thirty seconds the deer bounded off into the forest. There was also an unexplained frenzy of bird activity around us -- a Malabar hornbill, a flock of Plum-headed Parakeets and a White-bellied drongo swarmed about us, but we were too tense to enjoy the spectacle.  

The elephants seemed in no hurry to move

The elephants seemed in no hurry to move. They weren't feeding -- there was nothing fit to eat. They just stood there fiddling with the dust, silent, watching with their tiny brown eyes. At one moment, all of them seemed to hold the same frozen front-foot-in-the-air posture. The matriarch, leading the herd, stood to our extreme right, pawing at the ground with her enormous foot. The dust must have reached my nose (or was it my mind playing tricks?) for I began to feel a desperate urge to sneeze. It took all my yogic resolve to fend it off.


It occurred to us then that the second half of the match would have resumed. India would perhaps be chasing down that mammoth (wrong word to use under the circumstances) total set for it by Sri Lanka. Wonder if our pachyderm friends were aware that the mascot of the tournament was an (infinitely more cuddly) elephant called Stumpy? Would that knowledge be reason enough for them to let us get away from here alive and unharmed? Or did some form of jumbo-telepathy enlighten these elephants of the plight of their  relatives in Hambantota, where human-elephant conflict had already tainted the future of a sylvan hamlet for which the Sri Lankan government had big plans? Would the animals let us off lightly if we swore never to watch cricket again?


The herd shuffled in slomo while we stood as still as we could, and as quietly as our nervous, cricket-besotted minds would let us. Twenty-five minutes later, when the light had almost faded, the elephants had moved on out of earshot. As we passed the spot where the herd had crossed, Arun pointed out a scoop in the ground where the matriarch had pawed it. There was no trace of dung anywhere along the path (though two days later we would chance upon fragrant evidence that the herd had fed copiously and moved towards a waterfall five kilometres downhill in the Nagzhari valley). We got out of there as quickly as we could, fighting the instinct to bolt down the path. It was the fastest that we had ever returned from a birding trip.

Arun counts the years added to life at the spot where the matriarch had pawed the ground

Back at the camp, Sehwag had fallen to Malinga in the first over and Sachin and Gambhir were holding fort. Satish sat before the television munching a double-omelette and oblivious of our arrival. He had plenty of company by now and we had to be content with the seats at the back of the hall.  The forest guards were thrilled to hear of our encounter but Satish couldn't be distracted from his watch over Team India's fortunes. We had to wait until Dhoni had tonked the most celebrated six in four years to tell him how Stumpy had almost cost us the World Cup!

To Urigam after 4 long months...

A scene by the Cauvery

Finally, after four months of inactivity, I got an opportunity to head once again to Urigam, along with some KANS* members (by now even I was one). This is the very same place I had been to for a ground survey a few months ago. Except it had a stark contrast in colour: it was now covered in green. A couple of weeks prior to our visit, it had rained well, triggering an almost complete transformation of the vegetation. Trees that were bone-dry months ago had sprouted new green leaves. Grass and shrubs shot up from the ground. The entire forest looked refreshed and recharged.

We were welcomed by a Green Bee-Eater (Merops orientalis) as we approached Uganiyam. He sat bang in the middle of the jeep track and I could not resist clicking his portrait.

Welcomed by a Green Bee-eater

We reached around noon, ate our packed lunches which we had bought from one of the small eateries at a village nearby, and set off to do what we came to do - roam around! Most of us decided to take the route from Uganiyam to Dabbagulli (approximately 7 km).

Apart from the Grey Hornbills, which were all over the place, the first bird we saw as we started walking was the Sirkeer Malkoha (Phaenicophaeus leschenaultii) -- a lifer for me. Along the way, we split into three groups and took separate tracks away from the main jeep trail which led to Dabbagulli. Khusro, Valli and I walked till we reached a dry stream bed and then walked along the dry stream to reach the Cauvery river.

Here we sat down and relaxed for a while near the bank as it was getting really hot and we were quite tired after walking for around 4 km. I sat watching a flock of Small Green Bee-Eaters conduct their aerial sorties close to the water's surface, when all of a sudden Khusro exclaimed, "Deer! Spotted deer! Across the river!"

We froze, not moving a muscle, as we knew that even the slightest movement would scare them away. All this while I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of them. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't spot them. Finally, by the time I caught sight of them, the deer spotted us, froze for a second and then took off. But not before I managed a shot of their escape. Happy with our spotting, we began walking back towards Uganiyam.

The deer take to their heels

We reached Uganiyam around 5 pm and sat by the Cauvery. By this time Laxmi, George, Satish and the doc had joined us. We sat on the rocks whiling away time talking about various things but mostly just relaxing and taking in the breath-taking beauty of the forest around us. After a while, all of a sudden, Satish shouted from behind me: "Elephants!" I whipped around to see a herd of about 10-11 animals across the river. They had come down for a drink and a couple of individuals had entered the water. There were two calves in the herd. They were only about 100 meters away from us so I dashed closer to get a better shot using every possible boulder and shrub as cover. As I was doing this, a villager in a WHITE shirt appeared out of nowhere, right in front of the line of sight of the herd. As soon as they saw him, the herd started moving away into the forest. All I could do was curse him for the rest of the day, and the next! After our excitement of seeing the herd so close had waned a bit, we were in for another treat. A Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) perched on a tree on the opposite bank. Thanks to Khusro's spotting scope we all had a good look at it.

Elephants by the river bank

It was getting dark. Doc, Valli and I decided to go in search of Aparna and Anand in Doc's Tata Safari (they had not returned yet). We found them along the way and they hopped in with us. On our way back, I was in for another lifer - Nightjars. Though they were all over the place, we could not identify the species. Some of them did not move from the ground until the vehicle was almost on top of them. One even flew onto the bonnet and sat on the windshield for a second. At one point I asked Doc to stop the vehicle as I wanted to get a better look at one of the nightjars on the jeep track. While we were observing the bird intently, a movement next to the bird caught my eye. There, in the grass, crossing the track, was a baby Indian Rock Python (Python molurus). We held our breath in excitement, watching the snake cross and disappear into the shrubs. Excited with our sightings and thanking the lord for our good luck, we continued back to Uganiyam. We reached to find a very common but disturbing scene. A herdsman along with a herd of cattle about 50-60 in number had settled near the Uganiyam Anti-Poaching Camp for the night. Even though grazing inside the Reserve Forest is allowed, keeping the cattle overnight is not. But we were just mute spectators as there was nothing much we could do. The forest officials know of this and refuse to do anything about it. The next morning I woke before six, picked up my camera and went down to the Cauvery for a little photo-shoot. My 'model' was looking gorgeous as ever, draped in green...


Sometime later a small herd of Chital (Axis axis) with a couple of stags appeared near the opposite bank. Bonnet Macaques (Macaca radiata) accompanied the deer. It is said that they forage together in the forest and rely on each other to detect predators.





After a couple of hours, I went for a walk along the path (which I have named the 'Bear Highway') where I had found Sloth Bear (Melursus ursinus) tracks during the ground survey. Although I did not find as many tracks as last time, I did spot a couple of them. After walking down the 'Bear Highway' I reached the stream which joins the Cauvery, sat beside it for a while and headed back to camp. On the way back heard a loud whistling call which told me to look up instinctively - it was a Crested Serpent Eagle (Spilornis cheela) flying high in the sky! With this last sighting ended my short but very rewarding trip to Urigam after a long time.

A cicada bid us goodbye

*KANS - Kenneth Anderson Nature Society Text and photographs: Arun Menon

When the elephant played peekaboo

I feared the elephant's shrewd little eyes were fixed on the diminutive human shuffling against my thigh. I don't think we got the joke then, but when we viewed the pictures up close on our return to Bangalore, the punchline that tickled my daughter was ours to behold.

On a trip to BR Hills a couple of weekends ago, we came upon a herd of elephants beside a waterhole. It was dusk and the light was fast fading. The herd comprised seven individuals including a young tusker. They were waiting to have their fill of grass before going down to the waterhole to drink. 

We had not seen any "big game" that evening and the tourists (us included) who had paid well in excess of Rs 2000 a head for a night's stay at Jungle Lodges were hungry for entertainment or photographic souvenirs. And the staff was equally concerned about not disappointing them. So we stopped, interrupting the jumbo party, and spent an awfully long time watching the elephants. My daughter, growing bored of the increasingly dim view of hulking grey shapes in the tall grass, began to make conversation with herself. It was against the rules of the jungle, I suppose, and I had some trouble convincing her to quiet down.

The elephants grew impatient as they waited to drink. I was struck at how polite they were in objecting to the interruption of their evening's business: they shuffled impatiently but unhurriedly out of the undergrowth into our view. It was all very subtle and very civilized when they could have charged in unison and scared the living dung out of us. Sitting there in that open jeep with the air growing cooler around me, I felt a little ridiculous to be part of this paying party of safari-goers who were testing the patience of these sapient beasts.

There was a clear sense of leadership in the herd. The matriarch moved first, stepping out into the clearing. Another elephant, which looked a little younger than her (probably her second-in-command), seemed to be expressing her impatience to the matriarch with eye contact and head shaking. She seemed the more impetuous of the two and I am sure with time she would learn her management lessons. I was struck at how none of the other elephants stepped out of line to take the lead in charging us. 

The matriarch never took her eyes off us for a moment. When she had enough of waiting and dropping glaring hints, she shook her head, huffed and ventured towards the water. On two occasions when she trumpeted my daughter tried her best to respond. Heads turned in alarm and looked accusingly at my precious little underage tourist. At one point, I feared the pachyderm's shrewd brown eyes were fixed on the diminutive human shuffling against my thigh as I leaned out for a picture.

All along my daughter chuckled to herself, saying (in Malayalam) that this whole affair was a nalla tamasha -- a good joke. I don't think we got the joke then, but when we viewed the pictures up close on our return to Bangalore, the punchline that tickled her was ours to behold. The matriarch had been playing peekaboo with the little girl in the jeep.

A BR Hills weekend in pictures

Driving in the beautiful Biligirirangans can be equally exhausting and enchanting!

Drove with the family for the first time to my favourite forest in Karnataka last weekend. Wandered desperately for 40 km between Yelandur and Chamarajnagar looking for a fuel station because we forgot to top up at Mysore. We had a flat tyre outside the park gate on the way in, which delayed our lunch and made us all crabby. Blew up a freelancer's fortune on the acco at Jungle Lodges, went on two safaris (uneventful but for a lung-aerating drive), paid our respects to the presiding deities at K Gudi and Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple, and returned to the city morose via the very picturesque Kanakapura Road. 

A view of the Valley on the climb towards K Gudi

A copse of lianas and vines on the road from K Gudi to BR Hills -- one of my favourite stops in these forests

This young tusker was part of a small herd that we encountered on Saturday evening's safari

There were large herds of spotted deer with impressive stags

The monsoon was about to set in and the Blue Tiger butterflies were either mud-puddling or swarming around certain plants in the forest

Text and photographs by Beej
All rights reserved

The Andamans and Borneo - two beating hearts of darkness

...the morning I swam with him, the Indian Ocean was like a warm bath, just the way Rajan — and I — like it. I first treaded water a few feet away, watching him step like a delicate matron into the sea. He raised his trunk to breathe as if it were a giant snorkel, and his mahout slid off his back and swam alongside him; soon Rajan was pedaling away with his feet, gliding through the deep blue with unexpected ease. In my goggles and fins, I drifted alongside, admiring Rajan's graceful, slow-motion movements, and at one stage brushed my palm along his wrinkled flanks. For one unforgettable stretch, I flippered downward and swam beneath Rajan, watching him from below; weightless and drifting in silence, I had the strange sensation that we were flying.

Tony Perrottet's fascinating narrative about the Andaman islands (Babar and Me and the Deep Blue Sea, Conde Nast Traveler, January 2010) opens with an account of him swimming in the Indian Ocean with an elephant. Rajan, an ageing pachyderm once pressed into hard labour by loggers, is a celebrity on Beach No. 7, Havelock Island where he spends his well-earned retirement eating, snoozing, swimming and being gawked at by visitors to Barefoot, a remote jungle lodge.

Perrotet's writing reminds me of Eric Hansen's Stranger In The Forest, a true story of one man's endeavour to transect, on foot and by boat, the uncharted rainforests of Borneo. He wrote:

The Ambun Rapids were the last major obstacle blocking my way to the Apo Kayan - the highland plateau of central Borneo... The Apo Kayan is part of the large white patch on my map bordered by comments such as "Unsurveyed," and "Limits of Reliable Relief Information."

Hansen bartered shotgun shells -- prized by the native Penan tribesmen -- for food, shelter and porter services. Among other adventures, he stays with headhunters in a longhouse, is very nearly shooed away by misanthropic American missionaries, and joins the Penan in shooting and then hacking up a wild pig while it is still alive and thrashing. It's a fascinating book, offering unmuddled if slightly bewildering anthropological insight told with taut, candid narrative.


In the Conde Nast Traveler article, Perrotet relates a similar encounter -- except his is with the Jarawa, one of the most violated indigenous tribes of the Indian Union.

The slideshow, though, disappointed but for a couple of shots of the elephant in the water. It didn't connect me with the experiences related in the article. View it here.

An elephantine storm in a teacup

The Nature Conservation Foundation's EcoLogic blog has been around for some time now and its content is on my reading list. NCF does so well what other eco-research blogs fail to do - present great, relevant scientific information in a thought-provoking and easy-to-read way. Not to mention some high quality writing. "An apology to the Iyerpadi gentleman", T R Shankar Raman's recent blog post on the problem of human-animal conflict, is a great example of science writing - the science is solid but not overwhelming, and it is extremely easy to read. If there are any J-school kids out there who want to take up a career in science writing (still a very, very nascent field here in India), this blog post is a mandatory cut-and-keep. Raman (those close to him know him better as Sridhar) and his wife Divya work with NCF in Valparai. On this fragile but disturbed plateau in the Anamalais stand some of the last pristine Western Ghats rainforests, fragmented and continuously usurped by tea gardens and eco-tourism that's heavier on tourism than eco. Tea gardens are not quite elephant-friendly - they offer little by way of cover, and the bushes grow densely. Elephants use ancient routes to water bodies, on which they depend. Of course, much has been changed (by humans) on these ancient routes. Ergo, the pachyderms occasionally trample through tea gardens and the settlements among them. The animals are also accused by local people of raiding their provision shops. While this, on occasion, has been documented as true by NCF researchers, investigations have shown that many 'raids' have been instances of villagers taking advantage of the situation at hand, and conveniently blaming the elephants. In a fragile and sensitive ecosystem such as that in Valparai, the conflict for space and resources between man and elephant is a screenshot of a larger systemic problem - proverbially, an elephantine storm in a teacup.

My love, for you I would (if I could) give an elephant

 
It's how I met her. She wasn't yet my wife but I knew we were on our way to making that happen. We were at Bandipur one morning in January 2005. The trees around the forest office were throwing long shadows. The grass was soft with ungulate shit. My arm was unbroken. My heart was giddy. And my brain had no say in anything that was going on. We saw an elephant, me and her. We remarked that it was cute, me and her. And then we saw a calf, just a few months old, dart from between the cow elephant's legs. An elephant calf. A baby elephant. Nature's instrument of insurmountable cuteness pieced together with everything that connotes ugly in a human frame of reference - dark, hairy, rough-skinned, warty, fat and redolent of piss... 


"Wow," she said. "Wow," I echoed. And nodded. And did other things that indicated agreement. I was content just looking at it. But she... she wanted to touch it. It was a tame elephant. And there was a mahout with it. But I, burdened by my faux environmental extremism and other shitshat hangups, came within an elephant's hair-breadth of screwing up my chances of a lifetime by advising her against it. 


In fact, good sense prevailed. I suspended all those silly conflicts for an instant. Lest I regretted them all at leisure for the rest of my wife-less life. I don't quite recall what I said to the mahout. But before I knew it she was there next to the cow elephant, looking as wide-eyed and eager as a child gifted with a new puppy. The cow shuffled nervously, but the mahout invited the love of my life to touch the calf. The calf gave a little whimper and hid near its mother's hind legs. The woman of my dreams then reached out and, in one swift movement, clutched the mahout by the hand. Thus anchored, she mustered the guts to stroke the little calf on its back. Then she scurried back to my side. Beaming. No one was harmed. Especially no elephants. It was then that I saw them -- the cow elephant's udders. Tucked between her forelegs (like a human, not like a cow). Moist with the milk of pachyderm kindness. And I understood that this, our undeniable mammalian affinity to all things living, is what makes women do these cho-chweet things. And makes us men so desire women.* 


I just had to marry this one. 


* This is a personal statement and those with strong gay-lesbian feelings and affiliations should just ignore my political incorrectness and move on. Politically, I am supportive of same-sex relationships as long as there's love there and no one gets hurt. Zoologically, though, I beg to differ. More on that later.