Sacramento's Dumbo Drop

Anybody remember that 1995 Disney classic, Operation Dumbo Drop, where a handful of Green Berets in Vietnam had to transport an elephant for some reason?

Look at those smiles! I bet you never thought you'd see Ray Liotta shine like that. This hysterical romp through the fun-filled lands of 1970's Vietnam earned critical praise, with Joel Siegal declaring that it's got "A lot of laughs!" I mean, c'mon... even Dennis Leary is almost smiling, and that guy never smiles!

I bring this up because earlier in the week, Sacramento had a similar encounter of the hilarious kind. Granted, Sacramento isn't as whimsical as Vietnam, but it was similar in that the military was transporting an elephant. Get ready to hold on to your sides!

I was asked to stay late on Thursday night to shoot the Air Force delivering an elephant from an Alaskan zoo to a habitat near San Andreas. A few hours of overtime AND I get to see an elephant? Sign me up!

I arrived at Travis Air Force Base around 10 PM, and spent the next several hours sitting around, waiting for the plane to arrive with a bunch of exhausted and overworked photogs. Can't think of anyone I'd rather spend my evening with.

Around 12: 45 AM, the plane finally arrived with its precious cargo.

After about an hour, they were ready to unload the elephant, which was in a gigantic Jurrassic Park-style container.

After about another hour, they transported the container to a crane, which was used to load it onto a flatbed truck. This loading process took another hour or so.

So now this elephant is on the truck, and since it took so long to get it on there, they aren't sure if they want to let it out to stretch its legs or just hit the road and get it to the habitat. They said that if I waited around for an hour or so, there's a slight chance that maybe I'd be able to possibly see the elephant briefly.

At this point, it's 4 in the morning, I'm an hour from the station, and the morning show begins at 6 (mind you, I my shift started at 2 PM). I finally have to leave, otherwise it might not even be in the show, and I could end up waiting around all night to see the damn thing.

By 5 AM, I'm finally out the door and on my way home. I would have stuck around to watch it on air, but hey, I gotta work tomorrow.

So after 6 hours of overtime and 5 hours of sleep, I take a look at the morning show's aircheck when I get back into work. Of my hour's worth of kickass footage, three shots made it onto the air. Awesome.

So there's my version of Operation Dumbo Drop. It was much less exciting than Disney's version, as it lacked the sight of an actual elephant, Green Berets and a chipper Danny Glover. However, The Discovery Channel was there filming the whole thing, so maybe I'll see myself walking through all the guy's shots. Honestly, that would make it all worth it.

Still, wish I could have seen an elephant. I even brought it peanuts.