Down memory lane

An article by JD’s girlfriend on self-sustaining gardening, lead to a small discussion on JD’s blog about the fantasy fruits we’d like and any other tips that anyone could remember.

I mentioned that some vegetables and cereals can attract wild animals and in passing mentioned elephants and how they could demolish walls to get what they wanted.

To prevent that discussion from going too off-topic, here’s that story on elephants

Back in the ’80s, my dad worked for the tea division of Unilever India. We were staying in the estates where the tea was grown and these were typically in isolated hilly areas in South India.

Just before the rainy season started, the company would stock up on several hundred kilos of urea fertilizer. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the elephants went on their annual migration from one forest range to another and the estates along with the shed storing the fertilizer was right in the middle.

The elephants could smell the salt used in the fertilizer and would head straight for this shed. Shed locked and made of brick? No problem – just knock it down!

So by the next morning when everyone went back to work, there would be no shed left, only rubble, mostly empty bags of fertilizer and lots of elephant poo and elephant pee all over the place.

The company eventually moved the shed to another place far away from the elephant trail 🙂