It's not every day

that you find an elephant in front of a museum. Not a taxidermied, stuffed woolly mammoth, but a real, live African elephant wearing a sign around its middle. No joke. I was at OISE for an interview-type thing and when I was finished I decided to take my new camera (yes, I bought it yesterday after school) for a walk over the the Royal Ontario Museum to take some pictures of the new building addition that I STILL haven't seen.
So I'm walking along and I inhale through my nose (something I try not to do downtown because my mucus turns grey, sorry for the TMI) and smelled...elephant. It's a very specific smell, elephant. I can't really describe it, but I can tell you that I've been to zoos with elephants enough times to identify that smell easily. So I look at the crowd forming down the street and lo and behold...an elephant.
Apparently the ROM is putting on an animal exhibit of some sort this summer and today was the kickoff; the Metro Toronto Zoo was kind enough to donate the time of some handlers and 1 large African elephant, 1 juvenile male Bengal tiger, 1 Grevy's zebra, 1 massive Clydesdale horse and a 1 tiny and spunky Shetland pony for the cause.
I was so close to that elephant that if I had stood in line long enough, I could have had the chance to feed it a pellet of hay and touch it. I was scared, I'm not going to lie, so I didn't do it. Now I really wish I had. I did take a bunch of pictures, though, until my battery died (first time, had to drain it) and I went back to the subway instead of going into the museum.
What an adventure!
-Laur