What did you do this weekend? Because a guy in Paris snuck into the Natural History Museum and sawed a 19th-century tusk off a 17th-century elephant with a chainsaw.
The elephant is one that belonged to Louis XIV, who was king of France until 1715. There are plenty of questions that one might ask about whether this was appropriate or good, but in the 17th century, if you were a king and you wanted an elephant, you had an elephant. So that happened, and now the elephant’s skeleton is in the Natural History Museum in Paris, where a man broke in this weekend, sawed off its tusk, and escaped. The Guardian says:
Police were called to the museum in the early hours of Saturday morning where they found a chainsaw still whirring after a man in his 20s escaped over a wall with a tusk over his shoulder.
Then he broke his ankle. (The thief, not the elephant.) But if he had succeeded, he would have been able to sell that tusk for maybe a few hundred dollars. Oh, wait, that’s probably not worth the pain, suffering, and legal consequences.
Also, the Guardian reports, “The tusk was not an original but had been added to the skeleton in the 19th century.” Lesson: Do not steal elephant tusks from museums, but if you are going to, do your historical research first.
