It has set tongues wagging on Texel. The colossal elephant that travels across the island on a trailer. It is not known who the elephant belongs to. And why is it always in different locations? What do they have to do with each other? NH Nieuws would like to know more about it and started investigating.
The first photo didn’t even come from Texel, but from Slootdorp. Gerda Splinter emailed the editor: “We drove to Slootdorp on November 1 and we saw the elephant there. Our granddaughter is crazy about elephants, so I took a picture of it for her, because you don’t see them like that very often.”
The wanderer was spotted at the Den Burg ice rink at the end of November. Hans Klok’s circus had left there for some time and did not have an animal show. But many people still wondered how that enormous elephant ended up on the ice rink. The article on Facebook of the Texelse Courant yielded no fewer than 53 responses.
Not much later the elephant turned up in De Koog. At Camping Kogerstrand it looked over the grounds. The campsite has been in the news lately because of the vicissitudes surrounding the bridge. Just made contact with Gert-Jan Ippen from Kogerstrand. Do you know anything about it? His answer is short: “I have no idea.”
After this, NH Nieuws received a photo from photographer Leon Verra. The elephant stood at the former De Akker primary school in Oosterend. Someone has to know about this, right? While Texel secrets can never be kept for long, this mystery will not be solved for the time being.
“We are innocent. I have no idea who is behind this”
“Could it have something to do with Ouwe Sunder van Cocksdorp? I take him for that?”, reports Mirjam Pansier from Texel. Old Sunderklaas is an annual celebration where Texel residents go through the year with theater and humor. Wally van Beek from the organization is short-tempered. “This could have just been an action on our part,” he says. “But we are innocent. I have no idea who is behind this.”
Colleague Job Schepers from the Texelse Courant doesn’t know either. “I haven’t been into it lately,” he says. “But I don’t know either.” Entrepreneur and optician Jan Winnubst then? He always knows a lot. “I have the feeling that the elephant comes to places where there has been commotion,” he laughs. “I notice that.”
The places where the elephant has been spotted so far, text continues:
In Gerda’s photo from November 1 in Slootdorp, the elephant is being pulled by a van from contracting company Texelsun. Contact was made with owner Marco Witte. “Yes,” he says. “I had it behind my van. The elephant is out and about. But I don’t know where he is now. I can’t say anything about it.”
Witte indicates that he picked up the elephant from a carnival association in Breda. “But I don’t know anything else about it. The beast will appear somewhere else tomorrow, I think. We will know more in seven days.”
Seven days? Then the Ouwe Sunderklaas festival starts on Texel. Ouwe Sunderklaas is a costume party where the islanders disguise themselves beyond recognition. In this outfit they go through the villages and fool acquaintances. Current events are also made fun of. “That won’t last long,” says Witte. “Then the mystery will probably be solved.”