By now, the entire world knows about Nantes’ giant mechanical Elephant, the new unofficial symbol of the city. I’m barely exaggerating here: the Machines de l’île, the artistic vision behind the elephant that draws upon the work of Jules Verne and Léonard de Vinci, also built “Long Ma”, a dragon/horse that traveled to China. Now there is Kumo, a giant spider that stopped for a couple of days in its birthplace, Nantes, before taking over other countries.

I’m not that enthusiastic about the elephant anymore because I’ve seen it way too many times, but I did want to check out the spider. We were lucky: it was about to parade around the Isle of Nantes as we crossed the bridge. Mark got a spot close to the spider’s back and we followed it around.

And then I turned around to see the elephant was closing the march. It was funny, actually.

The elephant’s newest trick is to blow water out of its trunk and spraying the crowd randomly. Kids love it and tease it until they are soaked wet. I didn’t want Mark to get wet, so I resorted to a good old MommyLie™:

“Watch out Mark, this is not water, this is elephant pee!”

Mark looked at me with a look of pity.

“I don’t think so! Pee-pee is at the back mommy, not at the front!”

Smart ass.

You can see the complete set of pictures taken in France on Flickr.