AuthorSharon Eden-Smith (@sharonedensmith) is the entrepreneur who established Eden-Smith Music. She will be posting blog articles about the business of... 
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Practical jokes are a part of the workplace. When innocently done, they can solidify relationships & increase morale. Even my youngest music students enjoy pulling pranks on me. One cute joke pulled at Eden-Smith Music was placing the "easy" button (seen in the photo above) on my chair. When I sat down, the words, "That was easy!", issued from beneath my rump, much to the delight of my little prankster.
When my colleague was an elephant, the prank was much larger. In most cases, calling a colleague "an elephant" is not an appropriate statement. When I worked as a Naturalist Interpreter at the Calgary Zoo, however, my colleague, literally, was an elephant. One of my jobs was to give a 10 minute talk at the elephant meet and greets. I would describe to zoo visitors some of the elephant behaviors that they were witnessing, as they touched 1 (or more) of the 3 female elephants living at the Calgary Zoo. I always opened the animal talk with a description of how female elephants greet each other in the wild. That was an easy opener because my elephant colleagues would always greet me first when the talk began. A trunk would be extended so that I could give a gentle puff of air into it. In return, the elephant would gently puff air back out at me. This is the equivalent of a handshake or a friendly "Hello!" in an elephant herd. On one occasion, just after I gave a puff of air into an extended trunk, the elephant took a deep breath & proceeded to exhale the entire contents of her mucous filled trunk all over me. Along with the mucous came bits of her breakfast, pieces of her snack, some dirt & pebbles that she had picked up to throw on her back as sunscreen and some unidentifiable squishy items that easily stuck to my uniformed front. The zoo keeper burst out laughing, as did the zoo visitors. My elephant colleague's eyes gleamed with delight. The corners of her mouth appeared to turn up in a wry smile. She had successfully pulled a practical joke on me, within the 1st thirty seconds of the elephant encounter. That meant that the mucous on my shirt and everything else embedded in it had ample time to dry in the hot sun and gentle summer breeze. Since I had no clean uniform at my disposal, I had the honor of wearing my mucous encrusted shirt for over 5 hours, as I completed my shift for the day. I smelled like the inside of an elephants trunk, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the other Calgary Transit riders on my commute home.
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2 Comments
Donna Wilkins
10/22/2019 10:03:45 pm
Elephants are such amazing animals, and getting to work with them sounds like a wonderful job. A Day Covered In Elephant Snot was a delightful read! Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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AuthorSharon Eden-Smith (@sharonedensmith) is the entrepreneur who established Eden-Smith Music. She will be posting blog articles about the business of...
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