# The horrors of pachyderm drug abuse. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 20, 2008, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697 "2008-10-20T02:44:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/1 "2008-10-20T02:44:55Z")
OK, how did they keep up their habit? It’s not like they could rob Seven Elevens and see some guy in an alley. [Link.](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-10/19/content_10220370.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/2 "2008-10-20T03:26:53Z")
“Gentlemen, this could be our biggest wild animal-poaching contract ever! Our buyer wants us to deliver six Asian elephants across the border.” “Six elephants?! Impossible! How can we capture and control that many during transport?” “Hah! Don’t worry; I already have a plan! As it happens, my wife’s third cousin is the largest heroin dealer in Yunan province! We will simply feed the elephants enormous quantities of heroin, turning them into hopeless drug addicts! They will remain placid and easily handled for as long as we provide them with the drug!” “But… Xian, wouldn’t it be simpler to just find a buyer for the heroin instead?” “What?! Have you no pride, man? We are wildlife smugglers, not drug dealers! Now, get busy smearing these bananas with heroin.” ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/3 "2008-10-20T03:43:09Z")
I’ve heard of drunken elephants going on the rampage in India. They’ll either have broken into a vat of local stuff being made, or maybe, as I recall, fermented pineapples will do the trick. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/4 "2008-10-20T12:07:09Z")
Choose musth. Choose a job. Choose a mahout. Choose a herd. Choose a fucking big watering hole, choose pineapples, hay, big top circus tents and fancily dressed lion tamers. Choose long memory, high fiber, and dental insurance. Choose matriarchal social arrangements. Choose a zoo pen. Choose your rogues. Choose howdas and matching luggage. Choose a Hindu costume on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose human psychological self-awareness experiments and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose rampaging through a village watching dumbfounded, terrified people run for their lives, stuffing acacia trees into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last on the Serengeti, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/5 "2008-10-20T13:00:38Z")
If I musth choose… ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/6 "2008-10-20T14:00:33Z")
Oh, my god. I can’t get the visual of that part of withdrawal when your intestines start moving again out of my mind. What unholy mess must that have been like with an elephant? ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2008, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/7 "2008-10-20T16:55:53Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#): > > Choose musth. Choose a job. Choose a mahout. Choose a herd. Choose a fucking big watering hole, choose pineapples, hay, big top circus tents and fancily dressed lion tamers. Choose long memory, high fiber, and dental insurance. Choose matriarchal social arrangements. Choose a zoo pen. Choose your rogues. Choose howdas and matching luggage. Choose a Hindu costume on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose human psychological self-awareness experiments and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose rampaging through a village watching dumbfounded, terrified people run for their lives, stuffing acacia trees into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last on the Serengeti, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin? Awesome! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/8 "2008-10-21T01:32:13Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > What unholy mess must that have been like with an elephant? It’s pretty messy normally. A large percentage of the cellulose they eat isn’t digested and goes straight through. You can make paper out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/9 "2008-10-21T04:24:34Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > It’s pretty messy normally. A large percentage of the cellulose they eat isn’t digested and goes straight through. You can make paper out of it. In elephant polo, there are always a couple of gloved “shit picker-uppers.” When an elephant drops his boulder, they run out onto the field with a basket and throw it in. It’s great fertilizer, and you’ll always see it packed around the base of nearby palm trees. There is no mistaking elephant shit. In the city, the mahouts have to clean up after their elephants (they’re not supposed to bring them into Bangkok at all, but that’s another story), but when we lived outside the city, from time to time a mahout would bring his elephant through the area and not bother to pick up the shit. You didn’t have to be an expert tracker to know that little fluffy next door was not the creature laying those down. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/10 "2008-10-21T11:56:21Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > It’s pretty messy normally. A large percentage of the cellulose they eat isn’t digested and goes straight through. You can make paper out of it. Yep. Now imagine that’s been fermenting in the gut for 6 months due to opiate-induced constipation, and is now uncontrolled diarrhea. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2008, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/11 "2008-10-21T22:40:55Z")
Hmm…might have been waste, from opiate production? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/12 "2008-10-22T03:39:30Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > It’s pretty messy normally. A large percentage of the cellulose they eat isn’t digested and goes straight through. You can make paper out of it. It’s not easy to find even here, but I have obtained elephant-dung paper in the past and sent a friend in the US a letter with it. Extremely course. I could hardly write on it, and the finished letter ended up looking like childish scrawls. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/13 "2008-10-22T03:48:09Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > It’s not easy to find even here, but I have obtained elephant-dung paper in the past and sent a friend in the US a letter with it. I shudder to think of what you send to people you don’t like. ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/14 "2008-10-22T13:29:23Z")
> [@Terrifel](#): > > I shudder to think of what you send to people you don’t like. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/15 "2008-10-22T14:10:02Z")
It’s rhino’s on crack we need to worry about! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2008, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/16 "2008-10-22T19:17:09Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I could hardly write on it, and the finished letter ended up looking like childish scrawls. Perhaps my penmanship is better than yours. At any rate, they are just the thing for thank you notes to certain people; say, Message Board Moderators. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/17 "2008-10-23T04:03:12Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Perhaps my penmanship is better than yours. At any rate, they are just the thing for thank you notes to certain people; say, Message Board Moderators. > 🙂 No, no, I meant even _more_ like childish scrawls than my scribblings usually look like. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/59ef9b/32.png) [@Don\_t\_fight\_the\_hypothetical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_fight_the_hypothetical)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2008, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-horrors-of-pachyderm-drug-abuse/468697/18 "2008-10-23T05:44:07Z")
So this explains all of those circus elephants with monkeys on their backs.