Those pictures of the baby elephant in Dublin Zoo brought out the doting parent in all of us. At a hefty 80kg, the new arrival must be the biggest bundle of joy ever delivered in Ireland, and the wrinkliest. She looks 100 years old already, but no less cute for it. Congratulations to the proud mother and all the staff at the maternity unit, writes Frank McNally
There are some zoo animals that, no matter how often you see them, never cease to provoke wonder. The elephant is one, along with the giraffe and the zebra. Most species, even exotic ones, look vaguely plausible. The tigers are just bigger and more lethal versions of your cat. The monkeys look like us. But when you see an elephant again after any lapse of time, it can stop you in your tracks.
That's exactly what happened the first time I ever witnessed one in a natural situation. It wasn't exactly the wild: it was the middle of New Delhi, on the first day of an Indian holiday 10 years ago. My wife and I were waiting for a break in the morning traffic at Connaught Circus when we noticed - lo and behold - that the commuters included an elephant, ambling past with a heavy load on its back.
Amazed, I stood there gaping at it, which was the equivalent of holding up a "gormless tourist" sign for every con-artist and hawker in Delhi. Sure enough, we were immediately approached by a young man selling miniature chess sets that his grandparents had hand-carved in their remote mountain village. Impressed as I was by his grandparents' work - we later found it on every street corner - I declined to buy.
But then, disarmingly, the salesman asked if we needed directions to the tourist office. This is exactly what we needed. So, still off-guard from the elephant episode, we found ourselves being led on an epic journey through the back streets until he delivered us to a private travel agency.
When we finally extricated ourselves from the attempted hard sell, our chessman was waiting outside and, undaunted by our failure to earn him commission, offered to lead us back to where we started. Being lost, we accepted gratefully. But en route, we were then approached by a stranger who pointed in alarm at my wife's sandalled foot, on which a large dollop of animal manure had suddenly and mysteriously appeared.
As he removed her shoe to clean it, the concerned stranger pointed skywards to suggest the manure's origin. It struck me even then that it must have been a very big bird - and in a way it was.
When an exactly similar accident happened to us on a different street two days later, we realised that the bird in question probably had a trunk, and only flew in Walt Disney films.
Whoever had furtively administered the Dumbo-dung, there were suddenly three men attending the clean-up: one wiping the foot, one wiping the shoe, and a third standing by with polish. Meanwhile the chess-set seller waited patiently, like a man who knew he'd be getting 10 per cent of any tips.
The Delhi sun was beating down, and we were already weak from dehydration. But we somehow escaped the clutches of our retinue and retreated to the hotel, having learned the first lesson of Indian travel. Don't stare at the elephants.
A world without this weird and beautiful animal is unthinkable. Nevertheless it is a depressing fact that both the African and Asian elephants are endangered, which makes the birth in Dublin Zoo all the more welcome.
The ivory trade is still the main culprit in their decline, although the most chilling account of an elephant killing I have ever read had nothing to do with it.
On the contrary, the killer was George Orwell, and the incident occurred in the line of duty. It happened during his days as a despised colonial police officer in Burma, when he was called out to deal with an elephant in "musth" - the temporary sexual frenzy to which males of the species are prone.
The animal had already trampled a man to death. But by the time Orwell found it, he realised the frenzy had passed and that to shoot the animal now would be tantamount to "murder". He also realised that he was going to shoot it anyway.
The problem was that the hunt had attracted a huge, excited crowd of locals - maybe 2,000 people - all expecting the elephant to be shot. Not to shoot it, Orwell knew, would invite mockery. And as he explained: "My whole life, every white man's life in the east, was one long struggle not to be laughed at." The incident was part of his epiphany about the evils of imperialism, the realisation that "when the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom he destroys". But he shot the elephant anyway, and then realised with horror that it wasn't all that easy to kill one of these enormous creatures.
It took three bullets from distance just to put it down, mortally wounded but not dead. Up close, he could hear the stricken animal's breathing, a "dreadful noise" that he was soon desperate to stop. So he fired repeatedly from close range, but with no effect. Although the elephant did not even jerk at the shots, the rasping breaths continued.
"He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further," Orwell wrote. "In the end, I could not stand it any longer and went away".
The new arrival in Dublin will be spared such a grim fate, if for no other reason than that she is female. But here's wishing her a long and peaceful life anyway, even if it is far from her ancestral habitat. I look forward to visiting when the zoo's new elephant enclosure opens next month.