The Wanderer

The legendary Yankee manager Casey Stengel was famous for many things, some of which were sayings and observations on intricacies of the game and human behavior. I used a variation of this once at work and earned some major points on how to manage. Casey chalked a good deal of his managerial success and longevity at the occupation to keeping the 5 guys who hated him away from the 20 who were undecided.

There are books (probably out of print) on things Casey said. Some sayings are more enduring than others, but there is one that earns a placing at the top no matter who makes the list, when Casey explained that he really wasn't worried about the ballplayer who stayed out all night with a woman and who missed curfew. He was way more worried about the ballplayer who was out all night and misses curfew looking for woman. Lack of success can be more draining than imagined.

So consider the bull elephant who wandered from the relative safety of Kenya across the border into war-torn Somalia, looking for a mate. Somalia is a dangerous place. Elephants have been all but wiped out from there ever since the mid-1980s and 90s, having been killed by poachers for their valued ivory tusks.

Morgan (the elephant) was equipped with a GPS tracking device which recorded the 130 miles he traveled. There is no confirmed evidence that Morgan found a mate, chatted one up, and acted only in a gentlemanly fashion after being told "yes." (In elephant.)

What the game people did find was that Morgan acted like a member of a Special Forces unit on an assignment behind enemy lines.  He stayed out of sight by day, waited until darkness, and traveled very fast in that darkness. As any one knows, the bars never get crowded until nightfall, and usually then only after several hours of nightfall. Morgan was cool, and in full command of his self-preservation instincts.

A Mr. Douglas-Hamilton (has to be British with a hyphenated name), who has been studying elephants for over 50 years, was absolutely struck by Morgan's self-discipline. "He didn't peek his nose out during the daylight hours." And we know about the size of that nose.

It was theorized that Morgan, who is in his mid-30s, was repeating a similar trip he made like this one years ago. He was resuscitating his memory.

And since he was only in his 30s and nowhere near the age of the 100 year-old man who climbed out of a window and disappeared (plus, he came back), there will not likely be a book and movie about Morgan's adventures. Unless of course he really is part of a Special Forces unit and is trying to regain a part of his memory that has gone missing.

There could be a sequel or two out there if that's the case.

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