I was able to finish my small family of elephants toys for Rafaella our granddaughter mid-week. This is just a whimsy of a grandfather for his granddaughter since our son and daughter in law are in Japan and we can't see Rafaella because of COVID travel restrictions to Japan. Eric is in the middle of a Navy assignment to Japan and he and our daughter in law Helina live west of Tokyo. Rafaella turns one year old in October and I wish we could be there.

This set of elephants was my own idea based on the classic pull toy concept. I didn't have a pattern, but I did have our youngest daughter Rebecca who is a good artist to draw out some simple elephant shapes. She drew them out and then I temporarily glued the paper to a piece of plywood to cut out the shapes on a scroll saw. I don't use the scroll saw much in my normal work, but I found it leaves a nice smooth cut in plywood and doesn't need a lot of cleanup sanding given this will be a simple toy.

I wanted a piece of rope for the pull string and I had this idea that if I could find the right sized rope and made a saw kerf cut for the mouth it might be a friction fit to hold the preceding elephants tail. After some trial and error I found some para-cord in the "95" size works well with a saw kerf from my band saw. Then I simply drilled a slightly larger hole in the back of the mouth where the tail string rests. The mouth gap is just a bit smaller than the string so you have to squeeze the rope through the mouth where it comfortably rests in the back of the mouth.

This allows the elephants to be separated if she wants to play with them separately (or until she starts walking) but when they are all pulled together it's actually quite effective. Because the string enters either to the right or left of the mouth it tends to pull the elephants slightly off center, but in effect it works great because then they look more alive as the elephant pulls slightly left or right until it needs to correct and then it reverses slightly to correct.

Fortunately I left the tails longer than I initially thought was necessary. You have to give them a bit of a test drive to see how far back they want to be. Too short and they get in each other's way. I was able to slide teh knot back far enough until it was just right. The effect is that they weave back and forth just a bit which makes them look much more alive than if they simply pulled straight. The cats were impressed anyway.