Pachyderm Panic

Woolly Mammoths, once a big draw for tourists to Ummagumma, have started created havoc in rural communities bordering their nature preserves. Mammoths have begun attacking isolated villages, laying waste to breweries and liquor stores, in their search for booze. Wildlife officials blame the mammoths becoming angry drunks, on tourists giving the pachyderms drinks for photo opportunities.

Treznor suggests bringing in helicopter gunships to shoot them down and Melcelene suggest banning alcohol, both ideas abhorrent to Ummagummans. Melcelene’s second suggestion of having open ponds of alcohol for the mammoths is more likely to bring more Ummagummans into conflict with mammoths for booze. Hotrodia II and Equus offer to send cowboys to round up the mammoths, but animal rights protestors feel that this would be cruel to mammoths. Rivermist suggests creating a buffer against the mammoths with non-alcoholic beer. DAVAD suggests tranquilizing them and the Knights of Solomnia volunteer to use their heavy lift helicopters to help relocated the rogue mammoths.

Matters escalate, when a beer crazed herd of woolly mammoths trample seven traffic wardens to death on the outskirts of the city of Lennon. As a result, the government went with implementing several of the suggestions of their neighbouring nations. Unfortunately, the cowboys immediately ran into difficulties, because their horses were panicked by the mammoths. Several well-meaning cowboys were treated in nearby hospitals when they lost control of their horses in the resulting stampede.

The beer pools set out for the mammoths resulted in them being contested between mammoths and mobs of drunken frat boys from the Righteous Lefties. The pools that were laced with disulfiram, resulted in several university binge drinkers being hospitalized for overdosing. When an interspecies communicator from Rivermist was brought in to discuss the idea of non-alcoholic beer to the mammoths, both the student and mammoths began rioting. The worst result of the alcoholic pools is that instead of one rogue herd of mammoths there are now ten.

Tranquilizers are attempted, but owning to weapon laws in Ummagumma forbidding guns and darts, adhesive patches are the only means of administering the tranquilizers. The result is the deaths of 18 brave forestry employees and several helicopter crashes. Levity suggested safe drinking zones are now the only thing providing a barrier between drunken mammoths and the terrorized citizens of Ummagumma.

In the end the crisis is brought to an end by imports of a miracle herb, kuzu, from Florenzia that reduces alcohol cravings. With the assistance of an animal communicator from Rivermist, Tantor (leader of the original rogue herd of mammoths) goes on a speaking tour.