HOUSE HOMELESS, NOT THE ELEPHANTS.

Byline: DANIEL GUSS 

Local View

BENJAMIN Franklin wrote that, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

I guess Ben Franklin didn't live in Los Angeles.

This week, a magnificent elephant named Ruby was finally granted parole by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A. City Council, after imprisoning her at the L.A. Zoo for 20 years. Ruby is an innocent animal taken from her mother and natural environment when she was a baby. Her release came only after years and years of pleading by humans with a conscience.

And, it came about a year after another elephant named Gita died a slow, physically painful and emotionally suffocating death at the L.A. Zoo. After nearly 50 years of suffering. And don't forget Tara, who died just a few years earlier, at 39.

Make no mistake: These girls suffered, big-time. On our dime.

According to www.elephantvoices.org, "foot disease, caused by decades standing on the concrete floors of the traditional zoo enclosure, is the number one source of pain, suffering and premature death." Foot disease, and related complications, is what killed Gita. And you can imagine how badly it impacted her emotional well-being.

So it is shocking that Villaraigosa and the City Council continue to pour tens of millions of dollars into expanding the zoo's elephant exhibit, with an "improved" living space of 3.5 acres? Compounding this inherently flawed plan is that the 3.5 acres can be subdivided into even smaller, unlivable sections. Activists say that free elephants can walk tens of miles per day and have a range of up to 120 miles.

By Benjamin Franklin's definition, building out the elephant exhibit at the zoo is insanity.

It's ironic, then, to watch the City Council on its TV station, Channel 35.

As our elected officials keep animals against their will, in unnatural, expensive trappings, they haven't found housing for one of the nation's largest populations of homeless people. Then, when the suffering homeless people congregate on Skid Row, the LAPD descends on them to make them scatter with all the dignity of a cockroach.

No housing for homeless people. Forced housing for animals imported from another continent.

How wrong is that?

Here's a novel idea: Move all of the elephants to the PAWS Sanctuary where Ruby is now living, and take the tens of millions of dollars that have yet to be fully sunk into the elephant exhibit and renovate one of those large, empty office buildings in downtown for the homeless.

Then, free the zoo's long-suffering primates by shutting down the zoo altogether and using the land to save a thousand more homeless or low-income people that we're told City Hall cares for.

The headlines would read, "Elephants & apes freed. Thousands of homeless housed!"

And only vote for people who'll make those headlines a reality. It can happen if we care enough.