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An elephant broke into a store in Thailand to steal snacks and the reactions are priceless

"Let's ignore it." "What?" "The elephant in the room."

Photo credit: Canva

An elephant broke into a store to steal snacks, yet no one's talking about it.

Even elephants get a little snack-ish from time to time. Typically when an Asian elephant is feeling peckish they eat what's around them, grass, roots, leaves, maybe some fruit if they have access to it. But not every elephant is satisfied with what's easily accessible, they'd much rather have something tastier than a nice helping of grass.

Convenience store workers in a town located near a national park in central Thailand got a surprise visit by the self-appointed local snack inspector. An elephant, known to the town as Plai Biang Leck decided it was going to take a stroll to the local store to get something a little tastier than roots. Pretty sure he's heard about humans working hard to avoid discussing the elephant in the room so he decided to test his luck.

Elephant enters a grocery store in Thailand for snacks
byu/Flamactor inpics

It sounds like the start of a bad joke: "An elephant walks into a store...", except there's no cringy punchline. An elephant really did walk into a store in Thailand and surprisingly didn't knock everything over. He even used his trunk to do a little grocery shopping while the store clerks tried to shoo the giant creature out. You may be wondering how this real life Babar even managed to fit through the door of a convenience store, but it appears the store has a roll up wall, leaving the entire front of the store exposed to the outside world.

I wonder how long the elephant was planning this trip to the store? Obviously, he didn't have money to purchase his goodies but that didn't slow him down. He walked away with "nine bags of sweet rice crackers, a sandwich and bananas" according to the caption on the video. Do elephants have social media? If they do, I bet his followers are going to go wild on TikTusk over this exotic grocery haul. As for the tab the big eared fella racked up...? Well, elephants never forget so surely he'll be back to pay for his snacks (right after he figures out what money is).

Thai elephant breaks into local grocery store to steal rice crackers and a banana
byu/doughb0ii inDamnthatsinteresting

People couldn't get enough of the elephant's shopping spree that only ended when the store clerks forced him to leave. Of course, the responses were full of punny jokes people couldn't resist, with one being an amusing exchange, "Let's ignore it..." one person writes, "Ignore what?" someone replies, "The elephant in the room." To this, another person keeps the joke going with, "What elephant?" And just when you thought the banter was over, someone calls it all out saying, "I'm getting tired of these people who only want to talk about imaginary elephants all the time. EDS sufferers - Elephant Derangement Syndrome."

One person imagines the elephant's side of the conversation: "'Um, hello? Good morning? I’m looking for Extra Cheesy Cheez-Its…am I in the wrong aisle?'"

elephant; Thailand; elephant goes shopping; elephant in store; elephant in the room; funny stories Elephant enjoying a sandwich picnic in the wild.Photo credit: Canva

This person has a legitimate concern, saying, "Imagine covering a shift for someone and an elephant comes in the store that morning." How would one explain that without sounding like you've completely rounded the bend? It's definitely a situation where you'd need photo evidence for even the smallest shred of credibility.

One person claims to be the elephant's attorney, joking, "I’m the elephants lawyer: you’re all reminded that these statements are merely accusations and my client is considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."

"Wait until you see next door, they've got a bull in a China shop," someone else jokes. And the commenters keep the puns rolling. One quips, "Well you know how to stop an elephant from charging ....TAKE AWAY HIS CREDIT CARD" while another says, "He hates paying for grocery bags at the register, he brings his own trunk."

From Your Site Articles

elephant in store

Conservation

A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. This is what it looks like today.

12,000 tons of food waste and 28 years later, this forest looks totally different.

Image via Dan Jansen

A before and after view of the experiment

In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica with an off-the-wall idea. In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country's northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.

natural wonders, nature, recycling, conservation, environment, oranges, orange peels, dumps The first deposit of orange peels in 1996.Photo by Dan Janzen.

"It's a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it," Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.

When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was floored. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was "like night and day."

Environment, natural wonder, natural miracles, nature, oranges, planet, conservation The site of the orange peel deposit (L) and adjacent pastureland (R).Photo by Leland Werden.

"It was just hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems," he explains.

The area was so thick with vegetation he still could not find the sign.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

The results, published in the journal "Restoration Ecology," highlight just how completely the discarded fruit parts assisted the area's turnaround.

According to the Princeton School of International Public Affairs, the experiment resulted in a "176 percent increase in aboveground biomass — or the wood in the trees — within the 3-hectare area (7 acres) studied."

The ecologists measured various qualities of the site against an area of former pastureland immediately across the access road used to dump the orange peels two decades prior. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, the site of the orange peel deposit featured two dozen species of vegetation, most thriving.

natural wonder, nature, environment, conservation, oranges, orange peels Lab technician Erik Schilling explores the newly overgrown orange peel plot.Photo by Tim Treuer.

In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil, and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a dog-sized weasel) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter, on the plot.

"You could have had 20 people climbing in that tree at once and it would have supported the weight no problem," says Jon Choi, co-author of the paper, who conducted much of the soil analysis. "That thing was massive."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers found that such forests absorb and store atmospheric carbon at roughly 11 times the rate of old-growth forests.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

In many parts of the world, rates of deforestation are increasing dramatically, sapping local soil of much-needed nutrients and, with them, the ability of ecosystems to restore themselves.

Meanwhile, much of the world is awash in nutrient-rich food waste. In the United States, up to half of all produce in the United States is discarded. Most currently ends up in landfills.

natural wonder, nature, conservation, environment, planet, oranges, orange peels The site after a deposit of orange peels in 1998.Photo by Dan Janzen.

"We don't want companies to go out there will-nilly just dumping their waste all over the place, but if it's scientifically driven and restorationists are involved in addition to companies, this is something I think has really high potential," Treuer says.

The next step, he believes, is to examine whether other ecosystems — dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas — react the same way to similar deposits.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. Neither had spotted the original sign.

In 2015, when Treuer, with the help of the paper's senior author, David Wilcove, and Princeton Professor Rob Pringle, finally found it under a thicket of vines, the scope of the area's transformation became truly clear.

natural wonder, nature, environment, environmental miracle, planet, oranges, orange peels The sign after clearing away the vines.Photo by Tim Treuer.

"It's a big honking sign," Choi emphasizes.

19 years of waiting with crossed fingers had buried it, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the rind of an unassuming fruit.

This article originally appeared eight years ago.

From Your Site Articles

science

This trademark fight at Yosemite could mean bizarre things for our national parks.

Yosemite National Park is home to the sprawling, beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel, a historic lodging site, built in 1927 and declared a national landmark in 1987.

The Ahwahnee Hotel's interior was used as reference for Stanley Kubrick's classic film "The Shining." I'm guessing Kubrick liked how the hallways were just wide enough for two creepy twin girls, and how the doors failed to deflect axes. Photo via Joeyp3413/Wikimedia Commons.

But before you start packing your suitcase and pull up "Ahwahnee Hotel" on your travel-deal-website-of-choice to book reservations, there's something you should know:

After 90 years, the Ahwahnee Hotel has a new name — and it's disappointingly generic.

The Ahwahnee Hotel is now The Majestic Yosemite Hotel — and it's not the only Yosemite site to have recently undergone an underwhelming renaming.

Curry Village, a small lodging town in the valley near the famous Half Dome rock formation, is now known as Half Dome Village.

The Wawona Hotel, which was built in 1876, is now known as Big Trees Lodge.

Basically, the original and historic names of many locations in Yosemite have been changed to reflect the jumble of keywords you'd enter in Google if you forgot their real names.

"You know ... that lodge with the big trees. The big trees lodge?" Photo via Rennett Stowe/Wikimedia Commons.

So why all the sudden boring name changes?

If you've ever eaten at a national park (that is, eaten something besides the squished sandwich and granola bar in your backpack), you may have noticed that much of the food is provided by private companies, not the government.

Which, in theory, is pretty cool.

It allows the parks to make money by selling retail and dining space, and park visitors get to come back from their hikes to enjoy perfectly seared, bone-in rib eyes.

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

Everyone wins.

Right?

Wrong. It turns out that when a company takes over selling food and providing lodging at a national park, sometimes they also get ownership of the historic names of those locations.

Until recently, concession sites at Yosemite were handled by a company called Delaware North, a multibillion-dollar organization that claims to be "one of the largest hospitality management companies serving national and state parks."

The dining hall at Ahwahnee — I mean, The Majestic Yosemite Hotel. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Delaware North took over concessions at Yosemite in 1993, and when it did, according to company spokeswoman Lisa Cesaro, it also had to purchase "the assets of the previous concessionaire, including its intellectual property at a cost of $115 million in today’s dollars."

In plain-speak, that means that the rights to names like "Ahwahnee" and "Wawona" were part of the package Delaware North purchased.

In 2015, Delaware North lost a $2 billion bid to renew its contract with Yosemite — and this is where things got sticky for the names of Yosemite's iconic landmarks.

Delaware North had to hand concession rights over to another company called Aramark. Delaware North also demanded to be paid back for the names it bought, asking for $51 million. The government thought that price was a "gross exaggeration" and valued the names at $3.5 million.

That conflict is still settling. But Delaware North has essentially said that while it still wants the $51 million, the National Park Service can keep the names the same ... for now.

The National Park Service then, for some reason (presumably to minimize damages), went ahead and changed all the names in Yosemite anyway.

The NPS even spent an estimated $1.7 million on temporary new signs in the process:

Photo by Rory Appleton/The Fresno Bee via AP, File.

The National Park Service may ultimately win the names back. But for now, staying at the Ahwahnee Hotel or Curry Village is a thing of the past.

To make things even more complicated, Delaware North has also made a trademark claim on the name "Yosemite National Park" itself — any time it appears on park merchandise.

In fact, T-shirts bearing the name "Yosemite National Park" have already been removed from some of the park's gift shops.

This is a huge deal! Half the reason to go to a national park is to get a hoodie with the name of the park on it. That way you can tell your awesome hiking story every time someone asks about it.

Plus ... gorgeous postcards like this one?

Photo via Bev Sykes/Flickr.

Those would be removed from stores as well. If Delaware North's trademark claim is upheld, you wouldn't even be able to mail-brag about your sweet hiking trip to your friends back home in Nebraska.

Worse yet, the National Park Service might have to start selling postcards at national park locations featuring their new, way-too-on-the-nose, generic park names — like There Are Waterfalls Here National Park or The Big One in California National Park.

In fact, if companies keep trying to hustle the National Park System out of naming rights, soon we may all be getting postcards from parks with slightly different names:

Like this one in Arizona.

Formerly known as The Grand Canyon. Image (altered) via iStock.

Or this one, from South Dakota.

Formerly known as Mount Rushmore. Image (altered) via iStock.

Or from this famous park in Wyoming.

Formerly known as Yellowstone's Old Faithful. Image (altered) via iStock.

So what's the big deal? They're just names, right?

Besides being lodged into the memories of millions of families who've passed through the park in the past 90 years, the names of Yosemite's historic sites have significant cultural value.

Yosemite Valley circa 1870. Photo by Carleton E. Watkins/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

"Ahwahnee," which means "big mouth," is the Native American name for Yosemite's central valley. "Wawona" is thought to be an onomatopoeia for the sound of the great horned owl — believed to be a guardian spirit of the area.

Changing the names of these places erases their history; those names have been around way longer than the National Park System.

Most of all, though, this is outrageous because the national parks shouldn't belong to companies. They belong to the people.

The very act that created the National Park Service stipulates that the care and conservation of the parks and wildlife therein is for the enjoyment of people and future generations.

We visit national parks with our families. We create memories there and share pictures on Instagram to get the most Likes. We pay for the upkeep and survival of the parks with our tax dollars. We make laws to protect them and protest when they're in danger. They're ours.

They should belong to all of us.

Yosemite National Park. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

Filmmaker Ken Burns once called the National Park System "America's best idea," which is saying a lot ... after all, this is the country that invented the space shuttle, the cheeseburger, and christened the sacred marriage of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin Robbins in stores across the country.

But Great Ideas™ are what America does.

It's definitely not a Great Idea™ to have the names of our historic and beautiful national parks wrapped up in a petty intellectual property battle.

That's not what our national parks are here for.

They're for loving, cherishing, and gazing up at views like this:

Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Photo by Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images.

The names of the places we visit are a key factor in the lifelong memories we create there. No company should be able to take that away.

See these amazing photos as Death Valley prepares for a superbloom.

This is Death Valley.

Image from SeantvScholz/Wikimedia Commons.

Death —

Image from Wolfgangbeyer/Wikimedia Commons.

— Valley.

Image from Urban/Wikimedia Commons.

(If looks like something out of "Star Wars," that's because it totally is).

The name alone is enough to make you thirsty.

GIF from "¡Three Amigos!"

Death Valley is a basin in the Californian desert just west of the Nevada border. It is the driest, hottest place in North America. The temperature once reached a reported 134 degrees Fahrenheit!

If Death Valley is so "dead" ... what the heck are all these flowers doing there?!

The #superbloom of wild flowers in #deathvalley. Quite a site from the normal dry-as-a-bone landscape so typical for the area.
A photo posted by Peter Gaunt (@petergaunt) on Feb 1, 2016 at 8:42am PST

SUPERBLOOM!!!!!! #deathvalley #superbloom #wildflowers #desert #california
A photo posted by The Muir Project (@themuirproject) on Feb 14, 2016 at 10:59am PST

Death Valley, you see, isn't really dead.

The animals and plants that live in Death Valley have adapted to survive the long, dry, hot conditions.

Death Valley receives, on average, just over 2 inches of rain a year, so every drop is precious. Some animals and plants that live there are great at conserving water. Other animals — like the roadrunner — get their water from eating other plants and animals. And others just hunker down and try to wait it out.

"Meep meep!" — This roadrunner, probably. Image from Dawn Beattie/Flickr.

“One more ACME product, and I’ll catch that dang roadrunner.” — (Wile E.) Coyote. Image from Manfred Werner/Wikimedia Commons.

When it does rain in Death Valley, the valley is less like the surface of Tatooine and a lot more like something out of "The Wizard of Oz."

A photo posted by Death Valley National Park (@deathvalleynps) on Feb 7, 2016 at 6:33am PST

This year's rainfall may be super special, causing a "superbloom" to form.

"You always get flowers somewhere in Death Valley almost every month of the year," says park ranger Alan Van Valkenburg in a YouTube video from the Death Valley National Park, "but to have a big bloom like this, which we hope will become a superbloom — which is beyond all your expectations — those are quiet rare. Maybe once a decade or so."

A photo posted by Kurt Lawson (@kurt765) on Feb 14, 2016 at 3:35pm PST

A superbloom only happens when the conditions are just right: the perfect amount of rain in the winter and spring, the sun's warmth being just right, and no hot, desiccating wind to suck the moisture away. And it looks like it might just happen in 2016.

"You have to have just the perfect conditions. You never know when it's going to happen," Van Valkenburg says. "It's a privilege to be here and get to see one of these blooms. Very few people get to see it, and it's incredible."

A photo posted by Jenn Schicker (@jennschicker) on Feb 12, 2016 at 8:03pm PST

A superbloom's amazing riot of color doesn't last long.

"It's not a permanent thing; it's just temporary," Van Valkenburg says. "It's here for a moment, then it fades."

A photo posted by @skinnycaligeez on Feb 14, 2016 at 4:30pm PST

If you're thinking of visiting, catching a glimpse of the superbloom isn't really the kind of thing you can put off. Soon enough, the water will be used up. The plants will shed their seeds and wait for the next rainfall. And the land will return to sweeping vistas of dusty rock and the distant, lonesome calls of desert creatures biding their time until the next superbloom of life.

Image from David Mark/Pixabay.

national park

An elephant broke into a store in Thailand to steal snacks and the reactions are priceless

"Let's ignore it." "What?" "The elephant in the room."

A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. This is what it looks like today.

12,000 tons of food waste and 28 years later, this forest looks totally different.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

This trademark fight at Yosemite could mean bizarre things for our national parks.

Yosemite National Park is home to the sprawling, beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel, a historic lodging site, built in 1927 and declared a national landmark in 1987.

After 90 years, the Ahwahnee Hotel has a new name — and it's disappointingly generic.

So why all the sudden boring name changes?

Wrong. It turns out that when a company takes over selling food and providing lodging at a national park, sometimes they also get ownership of the historic names of those locations.

In 2015, Delaware North lost a $2 billion bid to renew its contract with Yosemite — and this is where things got sticky for the names of Yosemite's iconic landmarks.

To make things even more complicated, Delaware North has also made a trademark claim on the name "Yosemite National Park" itself — any time it appears on park merchandise.

In fact, if companies keep trying to hustle the National Park System out of naming rights, soon we may all be getting postcards from parks with slightly different names:

So what's the big deal? They're just names, right?

Most of all, though, this is outrageous because the national parks shouldn't belong to companies. They belong to the people.

See these amazing photos as Death Valley prepares for a superbloom.

This is Death Valley.

Death —

— Valley.

The name alone is enough to make you thirsty.

If Death Valley is so "dead" ... what the heck are all these flowers doing there?!

The animals and plants that live in Death Valley have adapted to survive the long, dry, hot conditions.

When it does rain in Death Valley, the valley is less like the surface of Tatooine and a lot more like something out of "The Wizard of Oz."

This year's rainfall may be super special, causing a "superbloom" to form.

A superbloom's amazing riot of color doesn't last long.

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national park

"Let's ignore it." "What?" "The elephant in the room."

12,000 tons of food waste and 28 years later, this forest looks totally different.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site over the course of the following three years.

Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests — those that grow after the original inhabitants are torn down — are essential to helping slow climate change.

Treuer believes better management of discarded produce — like orange peels — could be key to helping these forests regrow.

Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned to once again try to locate the sign marking the site.

Yosemite National Park is home to the sprawling, beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel, a historic lodging site, built in 1927 and declared a national landmark in 1987.

After 90 years, the Ahwahnee Hotel has a new name — and it's disappointingly generic.

So why all the sudden boring name changes?

Wrong. It turns out that when a company takes over selling food and providing lodging at a national park, sometimes they also get ownership of the historic names of those locations.

In 2015, Delaware North lost a $2 billion bid to renew its contract with Yosemite — and this is where things got sticky for the names of Yosemite's iconic landmarks.

To make things even more complicated, Delaware North has also made a trademark claim on the name "Yosemite National Park" itself — any time it appears on park merchandise.

In fact, if companies keep trying to hustle the National Park System out of naming rights, soon we may all be getting postcards from parks with slightly different names:

So what's the big deal? They're just names, right?

Most of all, though, this is outrageous because the national parks shouldn't belong to companies. They belong to the people.

This is Death Valley.

Death —

— Valley.

The name alone is enough to make you thirsty.

If Death Valley is so "dead" ... what the heck are all these flowers doing there?!

The animals and plants that live in Death Valley have adapted to survive the long, dry, hot conditions.

When it does rain in Death Valley, the valley is less like the surface of Tatooine and a lot more like something out of "The Wizard of Oz."

This year's rainfall may be super special, causing a "superbloom" to form.

A superbloom's amazing riot of color doesn't last long.