This just in: Yahoo News (or maybe AFP) prefers dangling participles over passive voice

I was startled today by the following link to a Yahoo News article on the Drudge Report website:

Fleeing conflict, elephants help Myanmar villagers to safety

You do see the problem, don't you? The headline has the elephants doing the fleeing instead of the Myanmar villagers.

I'm not making this up. In fact, here's the complete article, along with an AFP (Agence France-Presse) photo of one of the elephants, from which one of the villagers appears to be, well, dangling.

I thought immediately of an amusing old collection of grammar rules in which each rule violated itself. Specifically, I thought of my favorite, "When dangling, watch your participles."

What should the headline writer (I do not call him or her a journalist) have written instead?

There are a couple of possibilities. One is to write in passive voice:

Fleeing conflict, Myanmar villagers are helped to safety by elephants

However, if you are unalterably opposed to using passive voice (and I feel it in my bones that many of you are), you could simply move the misplaced modifier to its proper position in the headline:

Elephants help Myanmar villagers fleeing conflict to safety

I now close this fascinating post with a famous "droodle" by Roger Price called Four Elephants Examining an Orange:

The jury is still out on whether the orange is fleeing anything.

I don't see London, I don't see France

...and I definitely don't see anyone's underpants. This snapshot of my blog stats showed an extremely high spike on February 25th. On the same day most of my blog hits came from the country of France.

A few months back it was Russia causing spikes. My spies (it's only an expression, people) tell me that an extraordinarily high number of views is probably the result of robots. Speaking of underpants, Yorkshire Pudding should not get his in a wad and start speaking in French all of a sudden. Sacre bleu!

Take a closer look at my blog stats. Do you see what I see? *That sound you hear is All Consuming beginning to hum a Christmas song*

What I see in my blog stats snapshot is -- wait for it -- the skyline of Dubai.

Yes, I see the Burj Khalifa, formerly known as the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world poking more than a half-mile into the sky at 2,717 feet (828 meters).

One hundred sixty stories. Speaking of sacre bleu, sacre bleu! Here's a closer look:

Can anyone say "Tower of Babel"?

In my blog stats snapshot I also see Pinocchio lying on his back (see what I did there?) and if I squint and hold my tongue just right I can almost make out Roger Price's famous droodle "Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch" from his 1953 book that later became an album cover for Frank Zappa in 1982:

Here's another droodle from Roger's book. It's called "Four Elephants Examining an Orange":

I have done enough damage for one day. My work here is done.

P.S. -- I think I'm feeling giddy because today is the sixteenth birthday of our youngest grandchild. If you need a reason, that one will have to do.