The last time I saw Billy the Elephant he didn't look happy. He was shaking his head in his L.A. Zoo pen, which was an expansive, slightly run-down concrete facility that would suit me fine when it comes to space. But then, I'm no bull elephant. There is a consensus among many that an elephant shakes his head for the same reason a person does-to say, "no, no, no." Billy's been shaking his head for months, even years, they say.

There was no sign of his two female elephant pals, Ruby and Gita. Well there was, but you had to know where to look. They were corralled well out of the general viewing area at the Los Angeles Zoo. Ruby had been separated from Rita by a couple thousand miles, but returned after the city lost a lawsuit brought by those who insisted this animal didn't belong in Nashville. They had been close friends once, these two, but now they were being kep apart, from each other and Billy, just in case they had forgotten who each other was. Forget? I didn't think that elephants were supposed to forget. Anyway, a lot of us haven't forgotten them. The fate of L.A.'s three remaining zoo elephants is a hot topic among members of what's become known as L.A.'s Humane Community.

A lot of things are hot topics to these guys, of course. Spaying, neutering, no-kill shelter policies and the skinning of cats and dogs in China. No one could ever accuse the Humane Community of over concentrating on one special topic of animal welfare. But that's what I'm going to do, insofar as that elephants are, by themselves, a special animal category. They are some of the largest-and many say the most intelligent-land animals. And they increasingly depend on mankind for their continued existence, even as mankind threatens to exterminate them in their African habitat. And there are three of them in the L.A. Zoo that an increasing number of people would rather were someplace else.

See, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa campaigned on a promise to get the city out of the elephant business. Such promises, many feel, should be kept. Even to pachyderms.

"Nothing is anything like it," said the late Shana Alexander, a worthy writer whose career really sparked with her historic account of an elephant's birth in Life Magazine nearly 45 years ago, and ended, sadly with her last book, The Astonishing Elephant, a couple of years before her recent death. "A mysterious, even metaphysical bond connects our two species, and always has."

Now the fate of Los Angeles' own elephant trio has sparked a dust storm around City Hall. Obviously, the current housing of the two females, out of sight of nearly everyone who doesn't work for the zoo, isn't right. Obviously, Billy doesn't have room to roam and is confined to a largely concrete-floored space that, as animal rights activist Gretchen Wyler notes, "is ruinous for the animals' feet." The total L.A. Zoo space available to these animals who roam for dozens of square miles in a normal environment, is about a half an acre. 

Now the city proposes to give these animals a whole acre a piece-a total of 3 acres of zoo land adjacent to Griffith Park.

To the Humane activists, that 's not nearly enough. But to the city's budgeteers, it certainly must seem so. The cost of the enlarged new enclosure-it was at first pegged at less than 2 acres, but now they say 3-was reported in the L.A. Times to be $50 million. Roughly, $17 million per beast. It's to be called "Elephants of Surin," and in keeping with other new Zoo exhibits, it's supposed to pep up the concept of Zoo enclosures by giving one the impression, albeit a fleeting one, of the creatures in their natural environment. You can see primates and birds thusly at the Zoo. But elephants in the wild range over areas the size of our city. An acre per elephant is as natural a living space environment for a pachyderm as my hall closet is for me.

The Zoo's board of commissioners, at meetings I've attended, seem to agree that if you do the place up exactly right, somehow the environment can make the elephants think it's really a big place, just the way there are decorators out there who will claim to be able to make my hall closet feel like a 5-bedroom Hidden Hills McMansion, given a big enough working budget. Zoo director John Lewis recently said the same thing as the board members. Maybe he has one of those same decorators on the line. That might well explain the astonishing size of the "Elephants of Surin" budget proposal.

But other Zoos are increasingly giving up on elephants altogether, and sending theirs off to rural preserves where they can live in something much more like their natural environments. San Diego, San Francisco and Detroit no longer exhibit elephants, I am told. Their administrative thinking seems to be that it makes no more sense to confine elephants in zoo pens than it does to keep live sperm whales in aquarium tanks. As we recognize that, while elephants may be confinable in small spaces, they have a hard time thriving there, the zoo exhibit idea gets old. Not everyone agrees old ideas are bad, though. Councilman Tom LaBonge is as much of a traditionalist about these matters as anyone and the Zoo is in his Fourth Council District. He says that kids ought to have the right-or is it privilege-to see an elephant when they want to, and threatens to fight Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa if he gets in the way of this prerequisite, "mano a mano."

I wonder if Tom's aware that a this phrase means "hand in hand" in some Spanish-speaking countries? Probably not. It would be nice if he did, though, because a little hand holding would probably be a better approach to a rather delicate problem that will respond best to a sensitive approach. Councilman Dennis Zine spoke more sanely when he asked not only the humanitarian question of what was the best deal for the elephants, but also the equally humanitarian question of what that pile of money might better do for our human community if it were spent on something else. The council will have to make this decision soon. Seeing an elephant is a fine experience, but building a better school or creating a new park with the same amount of funding might be even better for children. And elephants. LAA