January 04, 2005
MAKING SF SAFE FOR HOMELESS ELEPHANTS
The mature, articulate graffiti on office walls of SF Board of Supes president/elephant protector Matt Gonzalez
Matt Gonzalez helms his last meeting as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors today. Gonzalez ran for mayor last year, receiving 47% of the vote against 'moderate' Gavin Newsom. He switched parties from Democrat to Green, because in Doppler shift SF, the Dems are basically right-wing nuts.
Gonzalez' accomplishments in SF:
- highest minimum wage in state ($8.50)
- passed ordinance making it harder for chain stores to locate in SF
- banned elephants at SF Zoo, making them as scarce as Republicans
- spray painted walls of City Hall office - historical landmark - with Smash the State
After the death of 2 elephants at SF Zoo, Gonzalez allied himself with animal rights kooks concerned activists In Defense of Animals to ban elephants. The 2 elephants were 43 & 37. According to IDOA, wild elephants can live as long as 70 years, because as everyone knows,they enjoy carefree longevity untroubled by predators, starvation, disease, infant mortality, & injury.
Actually, wild elephants' "life expectancy is 41 years for females but only 24 for males. While 82% of female calves survive to the average age of first reproduction (14 ), only 39% of males survive to the age when they enter musth (early 30s)."We still have elephants at the Oakland Zoo, however. In other local news, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown is expected to run for state Attorney General in 2006, a move enthusiastically endorsed by Death Row resident Scott Peterson.
A defense of zoos can be found in Yann Martel's Booker Prize winning novel, The Life of Pi:
"A biologically sound zoo enclosure— - whether cage, pit, moated island, corral, terrarium, aviary or aquarium— - is just another territory, peculiar only in its size & proximity to human territory. In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out."
Posted by Jeff at January 4, 2005 10:00 AM