When I was in B.C. recently I found out about Lucy, an elephant who is totally isolated, in a cold climate zoo and not doing well physically.  A  group of writers (including Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood) are trying to have Lucy moved to a better place.

Here is a link to a news article, published May 23.

On Zoocheck Canada there is a letter written by the writers to the Mayor of the City of Edmonton - it's really worth reading. There is a link on this page where you can email the Mayor.

As some of you know I have just participated in an extraordinary workshop led by Deena Metzger and heard some of her personal experiences with elephants in Africa and elsewhere -- she's written about them too, beautifully - given what I know from Deena I can't help feeling Lucy could do with all the support we can give her, even if it's to send our love to her.


Not an elephant, but another wonderful being, Frosty the Parrot. There are lots of 'dancing' parrots on YouTube but I think Frosty is the best one:

On the flight from Toronto to Heathrow I read a funny article in the Telegraph by Richard Alleyne about the effect of voices on plant growth:

"Talking to plants really does help them grow, especially if the speaker is a woman, horticulturists have found.

In an experiment run over a month, they found that tomato plants grew up to two inches taller if they were serenaded by the dulcet tones of a female rather than a male.
 
The findings vindicate comments made by Prince Charles that he talks to his plants although they suggest that for maximum results he would be better off recruiting the Duchess of Cornwall.

Appropriately the most effective talk came from Sarah Darwin, whose great-great grandfather was legendary botanist Charles Darwin, one of the founding fathers of the RHS' Scientific Committee.

She read a read a passage from the On the Origin of Species and beat nine other 'voices'.

Her plant grew nearly two inches taller than the best performing male and half an inch higher than her nearest competitor.

Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent at RHS, said: "We predicted that the male voice would be more effective but it turned out that the ladies were far better than the gentlemen.

"We just don't why. It could be that they have a greater range of pitch and tone that affects the sound waves that hit the plant. Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light."

The experiment began in April at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, with open auditions for the public to record excerpts from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

A variety of voices was then picked to play to 10 tomato plants over a month. Every plant was played a voice through headphones connected to the plant pot, and the conditions for all the plants remained the same throughout the experiment. To ensure the experiment was fair, two control plants were also left to grow in silence.

The results showed that women on average saw their plants rise by an inch on their male counterparts. Some men were so bad that their plants actually grew less than a plant that was left completely alone."