And today in DC, an Asian elephant named Kamala is dead

 

It pains me to on this day, this day of all days, to inform it's time to mourne the death of Kamala.

And by “we,” I mean partisans on both sides because Kamala made a big impact.

How could she do otherwise?

The old babe weighed more than 3 tons. 

Cause of death?

I’ll not fault those of you who are betting it was obesity.

But, no, this Kamala was euthanized. Osteoarthritis had put the elephant in “irreversible decline” and 3 tons is a lot of inertia

Kamala, 50, was an Asian elephant at the Smithsonian National Zoo, and it’s an actual zoo in Washington, a city that’s often described as a metaphorical one.

So today we have a woman who’s running for president under posters that feature symbolic donkeys and she shares her uncommon name (meaning: Sanskrit for Lotus flower) with a great beast that represents a party who’ll stop at nothing to elect a man many voters regard as a giant ass.

Take a moment. That’s a lot to digest.

And I’m being literal here because when I hear a 3-ton animal is being put down, I think DC ought to have one giant barbecue. The logistics are bound to be colossal. You could feed the world. 

For perspective, the other Kamala weighs about 110 pounds. So it’s the one Kamala weighs about as much as 61 of the other. 

How many people could a dead elephant feed?

I say this because the story, in what to me is an unforgivable omission, failed to mention the biggest question of this biggie-sized story.

How do you dispose of a dead 6,000-pound animal? Is there on the grounds a fabled elephant graveyard; or do you dismember the behemoth?

Imagine that task. I have to believe it would involve chain saws, forklifts and triple decker HAZMAT suits — and that’s just if the elephant comes with a penis.

That’s why I’m leaning toward the barbecue option.There aren't  many people who’ve actually eaten elephant. In fact, most people don’t even know someone who knows someone who’s eaten elephant.

Well, strike that one from your bucket list because you all know me and that makes me the guy that knows the guy.

The guy is the late John Clouse, one of the most entertaining men I’ve ever known. I first wrote about Clouse, an Evansville, Indiana, attorney, for National Enquirer in 1997. He was the Guinness World Record holder for being the world’s most traveled man. He’d been to something like all but two of the of the world’s countries, islands and territories.

A World War II vet and survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, he vowed if he ever got out of that battle alive he was going to lead an entirely original life.

And he did just that. He experienced almost everything available for a human to do. When nervous classmates threw themselves into a tizzy over the bar exam, Clouse said, “They ain’t going to be shooting bullets at us, are they?”

He’d survived plane crashes, deadly fevers and the terrors of being married and divorced 6 times. So I knew to call John when editors at Esquire called and asked me if I knew anyone who’d dined on testicles.

You know. Rocky Mountain oysters, fried bull balls.

The prescient among you may already see where this is going. I got a hold of John and asked if he’d ever eaten testicles.

“What kind,” he said right away.

Something unusual, I urged.

“Well, I had some elephant balls once. It was at this Berlin restaurant that was serving elephant testicles in what they were calling ‘Elephant Soup Burundi.’

“And, no, they didn’t come in a really, really big bowl.”

So, there you have it.

Maybe the timing of Kamala’s death signifies that if Washington wasn’t big enough for two Kamalas, that hypothetical is put to rest.

It is now. In fact, if my calculations are in the ballpark, there is now room for roughly 59. 8 Kamalas.

Keep that in mind as you watch the nailbiter results.