Cafe blase about canine company

It had to happen sometime. And it probably could have happened in any of the German or French Rhineland pubs in which dachshunds under the table are as common as May flowers.

Where it did happen first was in France, not far from the German and Luxembourg borders.

One of the regular patrons of a local Metz cafe, it seems, finally got fed up with all the canine company. When his complaints were unavailing, he made the biggest protest he could think of -- in the form of an elephant on a leash that he led smugly to his cafe.

In a mammoth anticlimax, however, the cafe failed to take the hint and bar all quadrupeds. Instead, it welcomed the elephant with open arms, as it were, treated him to a pail of orangeade -- and no doubt won a new satisfied customer.