America lost its bid to win the World Cup and Tess Tigress lost her bid to keep her questionable Tiger Touch Center. It fell apart, not so much from Mark’s investigations as from Rex Scorpius’ dismay and disgust and Gemma the Rampaging Elephant’s inopportune appearance, resulting in the destruction of the Center and Tess’s abandonment and flight to a foreign country.  

Mark spent this week filling Bill Ellis in on the aftermath of his assignment, though I assume Mark sent his article in to Amy Lee for publication (this is much more information that we normally never got from earlier Mark Trail stories). The tigers were all liberated by Mark, Rex, and Diana and seeded out to various legitimate zoos. “Broken-hearted” Rex resumed his Internet show and apparently now has the hots for a zookeeper in California (of all places). The abandoned employees were left to fend for themselves and likely wandered off into the desert. Mark is not a social worker. Gemma plodded off into history. But the whereabouts and whatabouts of Diana Daggers have been left to the imagination. So, you are now up to speed and can relax a bit with today’s nature talk!

The customized title panel makes a clever link to the just-completed Tiger Touch Center story. Otherwise, this comes across as something like a student’s PowerPoint presentation, “Our friend, the elephant”. On the other hand, the drawing is fairly good here. We could have dispensed with the faux Wild West reference panel and used it more wisely to impart more useful information.

For example, it seems that elephants like music, especially classical music. For some time now, Paul Barton has been playing classical piano alongside rescued elephants living at “Elephants World” in Thailand, for therapeutic support. Barton’s YouTube video of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played for Mongkal the elephant is enlightening and heartwarming.