Elephant!

[Undeniable Truth]

An Oklahoma couple driving home from church nearly slammed into a giant pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.

"Didn't have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road," driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. "At the very last second I said 'elephant!'"

Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his SUV at the last second and ended up sideswiping the 29-year-old female Asian elephant on U.S. 81 in Enid, about 80 miles north of Oklahoma City.

"So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us," he said. "We'd have been history."

The couple, who own a wheat farm, weren't injured. But the 8-foot, 4,500-pound elephant was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.

While the vet doesn't believe the elephant has broken any bones, he says he doesn't have an x ray room large enough to examine it properly.

"The dispatcher didn't believe her: 'You hit a what?'" he said. "I told my wife, I don't know whether to cry or laugh."

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/artic..._0_ENIDAn11306

[Pene784]

I am glad the elephant is fine and the couple were uninjured. Now they have a really cool party story too! That would be so freakin bizarre if it happened to you wouldn't it?

I lived in South Florida as a child and lots of people have exotics (yeah that is right, I am from South Florida, DONT JUDGE ME). Once while standing on a sidewalk waiting for my dad, a station wagon pulled up. The window rolled down and a LION stuck his head out. I think my jaw just about hit the sidewalk. I started calling for my dad to come out of the store. Before he got out the light turned green and the lion was gone. My dad of course was like you did not see a lion, you probably saw a large Chow Chow, they can look like lions. I was vindicated the next day when low and behold the guy had been pulled over and arrested for having the lion and was on the news, station wagon and all.

[sanityslipping]

Wow... how um, out there. I'd have a hard time believing it if I drove into an elephant myself.. don't blame the dispatcher one bit lol. Until the car stopped and I got out to see it (maybe touch it) I'd be checking my glasses and trying to figure out why I would be hallucinating.

Oh, and Pene, I saw a lion in the petsmart parking lot one day when I was a kid. Sitting in the back of a hummer. I remember being scared that that thing would jump out and eat my puppy.