#blue elephant

#MAJA😺💙🐘ME & MY BLUE ELEPHANT from *The Show with the Mouse*🖥️🐭🐥🐘Ⓜ️

Elphie's person (one of you dear people) wrote back in April 2019, when the world was very different, about Elphie needing some help.

Here are the diagnostic photos she sent:

Now Elphie was an Eden elephant, and originally had a pull in his trunk that attached to a music box. That was long gone (and something I couldn't fix), but otherwise, he was in pretty good shape. The felt at his heels were worn, and his ears and trunk tip, once pink check, had faded to white. He had also lost some of his plumpness to hugs over the years.

We agreed on a treatment plan: gentle spa, recovering of inner ears, trunk tip, and heels.

But then, as you know, life happens, and then the world happened, and all of a sudden it was September 2021 and Elphie's person wrote again. They were in a much better place, and ready to send Elphie to the hospital. The only change was a small seam wound that Elphie needed stitched up too. No problem. :-)

Elphie didn't have far to fly, his person lives about 50 miles from me. But he did take a bit to work up the courage for the solo trip, so didn't arrive till Thanksgiving.

First things first, Elphie got a bubble bath:

Nice and clean, he got restuffed, including a heart of original stuffing, blue and white as a memory of the colors when he arrived at the hospital:

On to the transplants... Elphie was one of those rare patients who I had perfect fabric matches for! So his new pink and white checked inner ears and nose tip, and new pink felt heels, were just right. Here he is posing to get his chubbiness adjusted:

Here he is showing off some more of his wound repairs....

And here he is, ready for his second solo flight, back home!

He flew home just after New Years (flying during the holidays could scare even the bravest elephant what with all those heavy packages). He arrived home promptly and his person wrote:

Dear Beth,