Happy Elephant Appreciation Day!

Hot on the heels of Talk Like a Pirate Day, and vaguely reminiscent of Festivus, today we celebrate Elephant Appreciation Day, whether we like it or not.

This officially trademarked holiday was created in 1996 by Wayne Hepburn of Mission Media, Inc., and, more importantly creator of the Elefunteria website, dedicated to all things elephant.

Hepburn's elephant obsession began with an elephant adorned paperweight in 1970, and by 1997 had grown to a marginally obsessive collection of more than 1900 items including figures, toys, books, and music boxes.

His website shares his enthusiasm with the world. There you can find all sorts of information about elephants, but you can also find information about how to celebrate Elephant Appreciation Day. For example, the dancing figures above are demonstrating the "Tail Up Elephant Parade", a conga-line like dance, and one of two official Elephant Appreciation Day dances. He provides a chart of phonetic pronunciations of the word for elephant in several different languages (including representations in braille and morse code), and, of course, anyone this inspired about anything has to be moved to poetry:

I've tried and tried but simply can't
Find anything better than the Elephant.

And, at the risk of bringing the trademark cops down on the lads, I will also give you this link to the ska-punk-indie band Elephant Appreciation Day (download their entire EP!).

Sources:
Elefunteria
Neatorama
Holiday Insights