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“How do I launch an elephant out of a cannon?” – In search of a cannon
Okay, so, there are multiple ways of going about this. If you want to launch a live elephant and keep it in one piece, you’re gonna need a lot of gunpowder and a HUGE cannon. The emphasis is on the size of the cannon because you ultimately want to ensure the elephant fits inside.
Elephants are around 8,000 to 13,000 lbs, so I would say that if you had enough power to release the elephant from the cannon, you might end up with an elephant two feet away from you with a toasted butt. If you’re trying to use more firepower to make the elephant land further away, you won’t end up with a live elephant but a very burnt (and dead) one. If you choose to do it this way, be prepared to receive files of animal abuse complaints — for ethical reasons, you might want to avoid this route.
Alternatively, if launching a living elephant is not a necessity, you could put pieces of an elephant (RIP) in a regular-sized cannon with regular amounts of gunpowder. You should also anticipate animal abuse complaints for using this method, because where are you getting these pieces of elephant? The black market? From poachers? Ivory is soooooooo not in anymore. Ethically, you might want to avoid this route as well.
A more traditional route would be to use a plain old cannon, like those you might imagine seeing on castle walls back in the medieval days, though those are typically reserved for cannon balls launched at enemies who dare to come near. To follow our elephant theme, we could wrap the cannon balls in elephant leather. This would serve a more stylistic purpose than a practical one, so unless you want to own pretty cannonballs, you should skip this.
Given the weight of an elephant, I will know it is you, a fellow elephant devotee, trying to experiment with elephants in cannons when I receive my UCSD Timely Warning: Earthquake. It would be hard for this endeavor to be your secret backyard project, so I recommend using someone else’s. Some areas near San Diego to try are Anza-Borrego Desert, Barstow area, or Borrego Springs. My ultimate advice is this: do not try launching elephants at home. These deserts have low population densities and are relatively flat, making them the perfect place to build your own elephant-based Area 51 in Southern California!