These are just about the last pictures taken that day my younger daughter and I went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park… there I am, looking very manly indeed, in my… as I like to think of it: ‘war correspondent/photojournalist vest’.

You have to be pretty manly to pull off wearing one of those!

Just look at those manly calves!

Observe my steely-eyed look of determination as I singlehandedly hold back a rampaging bull elephant!

That plastic tusk was pretty hot, let me tell you.

And what am I doing there? Hey, they don’t call me the rhino whisperer for nothing.

And it takes real skills to make a brass rhino listen to you.

And there I am, relaxing at the end of a long adventure…

On a seat that only the manliest of manly men would choose.

Goodbye, plastic elephant, until we meet again… and thank you, Mollie, for humoring me… and my blog friends… by taking these pictures.