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World Elephant Day
"🎶 Look out! Look out!
Pink elephants on parade.
Here they come! Hippety hoppety.
They're here, and there.
Pink elephants ev'rywhere!"
~ Pink Elephants, Dumbo (1941)
Imagine a world where pink pachyderms parade in perpetuity! This tartan takes its name and colour inspiration from the expression "seeing pink elephants"! This phrase has long been a euphemism for drunken hallucinations, but before it became popularized in the late 19th century, people used to say instead they "saw snakes" or "snakes in their boots." By 1889, writers had begun to embellish this imagery, describing inebriated visions of "pink and green elephants and feathered hippopotamuses"! In the wild, there really are a type of "pink" elephant! These natural albino variations, also called "white elephants," stand out amongst their grey herd members. World Elephant Day is a global event dedicated to the preservation and protection of elephants of all shades and colours, whether in the wild, in sanctuaries, or wherever they may be found. Think Pink! 🖤 💗 🐘🐘🐘 💗 🖤
On August 12, 2012, the inaugural World Elephant Day was launched to bring attention to the urgent plight of Asian and African elephants. The elephant is loved, revered and respected by people and cultures around the world, yet the number of elephants in the wild is dwindling. They are increasingly vulnerable in terms of illegal species harvesting and encroachment on their habitats.
There are many ways to support elephants, either by focussing on the plight and conservation of wild elephants or by helping to provide a better quality of life and sanctuary for rescued or abandoned elephants who have been raised or worked in captivity.
Designed by Carol A.L. Martin, this tartan takes its name from the expression "seeing pink elephants", a euphemism for a drunken hallucination.
For many decades before "pink elephant" became the standard drunken hallucination, people were known to "see snakes" or "see snakes in their boots." Beginning in about 1889, writers made increasingly elaborate modifications to the standard "snakes" idiom. They changed the animal to rats, monkeys, giraffes, hippopotamuses or elephants, and added color – blue, red, green, pink – and many combinations thereof.
A well-known reference to pink elephants occurs in the 1941 Disney animated film Dumbo. Dumbo, having taken a drink of water from a bucket spiked with champagne, begins to hallucinate singing and dancing elephants in a segment known as "Pink Elephants on Parade".
For more about actual pink elephants, which do exist in nature as an albino (also called a white elephant) variation, click the baby albino elephant (which appears pinkish) seen with its mother at Kruger National Park, in South Africa, last March in 2016.