Seeing ourselves in Billy

One recent afternoon at the Los Angeles Zoo's elephant exhibit, a grayish creature with wrinkles around the eyes stared over the wood-and-rope fence. He was slow afoot, kind of lumbering. He seemed, in some ways, ill-suited to the modern world. He faced an uncertain future. And, my, what big ears he had. Kevin Modesti in the Daily News.

But enough about me.

This is supposed to be about Billy the elephant.

What to do with Billy has become an emotional question in Los Angeles, a controversy that comes to a trunked and tusked head today when the City Council votes to resume or cancel construction of an expanded elephant enclosure at the zoo. "People are paying attention," L.A. Zoo Director John R. Lewis said, referring both to proponents of the zoo's $42 million project and to activists who say any zoo habitat is inhumane. "It's a passionate issue."