Wednesday, March 16, 2005

the trouble with elephants...

Over the course of the last two days, the local news here in Los Ang-e-leeze is that a couple of elephants are stuck in a zoo enclosure, without enough room to be "healthy."

Now, I love most of all the creatures out in creature-land, and I don't like to see any creature in a zoo, I really don't. In the jungle, on the steppe, traversing the Rockies, roaming through the fjords...anywhere in the wild is where I want wild animals. I take no pleasure in seeing a mighty beast enclosed and on "public display." But over the years, I've seen some disturbing reports of elephant behavior in the wild...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/481382.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2583891.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3423881.stm

and I'm thinking, even if conditions are a little rough in the zoo...can we, as a society, really afford to have drunken rampaging elephants on the loose in our streets? Of course not! And if they were, they'd just rampage until they killed someone! And then, wouldn't we then have to find room for 'em in our already overcrowded penal system? (cause what Judge would risk the outcry of sentencing an elephant to death??) Of course we would! And I for one am tired of paying my hard earned tax dollars - supporting drunk elephant convicts!


Probly then we'd have people complaining about the conditions of elephants in our prisons...and where will it end? Special prisons for elephants? Riiiiight. What could we possibly call a special prision for elephants?

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