QUEER ENCOUNTERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 51, Issue 135, 20 March 1931, Page 8

QUEER ENCOUNTERS.

ELEPHANTS IN ENGLAND. Apparently it is not an uncommon experience to meet an elephant in an English lane. Attracted by a paragraph in a newspaper stating that a constable cycling along a lane had found himself unexpectedly confronted by an ostrich, the editor of the “Countryman” offered a prize to the reader who could recall the most unusual experience of a similar nature. The replies are printed in' the January number of the “Countryman.” Elephants head the list easily. One man reports: “1 was walking along u footpath at Wantage when there suddenly loomed up an elephant also walking on tlie footpath. I got off ” Through a fog one day at Swanage another reader was astounded to see an elephant. He adds:. “Seated on his* hack was an "‘lndian,” who hailed me with ‘Guid mornin’. ” A Yorkshire man reports having had his car stopped in a lane “because an elephant was having a rest.” A quarter of a mile farther he met a distracted youth, who inquired whether lie had seen a stray elephant. A man from Cheshire goes one better, haying come across two elephants in a lane. These experiences however, shrink into insignificance beside the harrowing adventure of Mr E. M. Pyne who was tramping along a beautiful byroad in Surrey about half-past 9 o’clock in the evening when he suddenly heard “a heavy thudding, .shuffling noise—it was caused by four elephants.” Another reader reports having seen four elephants near Windsor, in miid-winter, with six inches of snow on the ground. These elephants were all strays from menageries. Perhaps the best of these peculiar encounters is described by “E.P.” who writes: “On a summer day niv daughter was driving with me in the depths of the country with not a house or a soul ill sight. We turned a corner and met an elephant. It walked slowly dromedaries. ‘This is serious,’ I said. We turned another corner and met two dromedaries. ‘This js serious,” Isaid. ‘Alligators next, I expect,’ said my daughter. Round the next corner, 100yds away, we met a camel and then the rest of the travelling menagerie.” One reader reports that, travelling in the West Highlands he came across a drove of cattle, and at the head of the drove a man sitting on a camel. The camel belonged to a circus and it had been left behind through sickness. The drover had cured it and had become attached to it, and he would not part with it. A swan sharing a bicycle with its owner is reported as having been seen in a Midland town. The prize went to Mrs Aiken, of Llan-o-ollen, who stated that her brother-in-law, the late Dr. C. E. Aiken, was on a walking tour with some friends. J hey turned off the main road into a field, where the party sat down against a stone wall for lunch. Here one of the party picked up in the grass—a human ear. Although inquiry was made there was never any explanation.