I used to work for an engineering insurance company and sometimes had to go on site visits with surveyors to see what people were building or making.

One of those visits was to a zoo where they were building an extension to their elephant enclosure.

The zoo had had to move the bull elephant to an out of the way pen that wasn’t on public display. They said that he’d been mistaking the JCBs that were working on the building for competition and getting rather aggressive with everyone.

The day that we visited a new female elephant had arrived. They’d rescued her from another zoo where she’d been the only elephant. She was twenty-five and had never seen another of her own kind.

They put her in a pen next to the bull elephant. And she was fascinated.

She kept putting her trunk through the bars and touching him, it looked like she was examining him to see if he really was the same as her.

The bull elephant quite liked this of course. He knew exactly what she was. He’d seen plenty of other elephants before.

By the time we left they had their trunks entwined through the bars. Just like they were holding hands.

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