Asian Elephant in Detox

Tonight I had a choice between writing about Republicans or Democrats, but I really hate politics, although I did watch Sarah Palin’s entire dynamite speech. Anyway, I asked myself what would be more interesting to my readers, a story about the first Republican woman VP candidate, or the first elephant that ever got hooked on heroine? Xiguang the elephant won.

I found this story out on the BBC while I was Googling for a rebuttal against Democrats, who question Palin’s foreign policy experience. I also found a video that proves Pablo Picasso is reincarnated as an endangered Asian Elephant. I just love the credibility of Internet research.

Who is Xiguang, you ask?

Xiguang is a four-year-old Asian Elephant that was ambushed by elephant traders when he was only a year old. They fed him bananas laced with heroine for a year to keep him calm and controlled. They let him loose when the food bill topped the $5 Million mark. No one knows the long-range goal of the ROI.

A Wildlife conservation group found Xiguang with a monkey on his back in the southwest of China. They must have interrogated him, because they reported to the BBC that he was first captured by the traders along the Chinese-Mynmar border in March of 2005 and kept drugged for a year. The conservation group took him to an animal protection center in Hainan Island, China, and treated him with methadone injections until he was clean.

When he returns home on Saturday, he will reside at the Yunnan Wild Animal Park in Yunnan province, Kunming. As you can see from the above photo, his mother is pissed.

Sources are still not certain if he was originally abducted to restore the Sistine Chapel.