Zoo Visitors Mourn Loss of Hannibal the Elephant

Alex Perez knew the moment she woke up Sunday morning that, rain or no rain, this was the day she was going say goodby to Hannibal.

A regular visitor to the Los Angeles Zoo since childhood, the 23-year-old computer operator from Lynwood had taken a special interest in the 16-year-old African bull elephant since last fall, when zoo officials first tried--and failed--to tranquilize him and ship him to a Mexican zoo.

On Friday, when Perez first heard that Hannibal had died as the zoo tried to move him again, she surprised her co-workers and herself by announcing, “My elephant died!” And on Sunday, she was among several people who came to the zoo to mourn the five-ton pachyderm.

“I woke up and said: ‘Dad, I’m going to pay my respects,’ ” said Perez. She stood at the elephant exhibit with her parents, Nacho and Terri Perez, and her 4-year-old daughter DiJionee. “Some people might say, ‘Oh, well, there’s more elephants.’ But I don’t feel like that.”

As the rain made small rivers of the zoo’s paved walkways, more than a dozen people who stopped at the zoo’s elephant exhibit said they had Hannibal on their minds.

Some said they were angry at zoo officials’ handling of the rowdy elephant, who just last week had torn the metal door to his pen off its hinges. Others questioned whether Hannibal had been over-tranquilized. Still others said they believed that the zoo had done its best, and their hearts went out to Hannibal’s keepers.

On one thing, they all agreed: The wet, gray weather set a fitting mood for a farewell.

Marv Rosenhaft, a 48-year-old health insurance salesman from West Los Angeles, stood at the exhibit railing and watched five of the zoo’s remaining seven elephants frolicking and trumpeting in the mud. He said he usually came with his wife and daughter, but on Sunday he had a strong desire to come alone.

“It seemed like the right day--a sad day,” Rosenhaft said, adjusting his umbrella to keep the torrents of rain out of his eyes. He and his wife had discussed Hannibal at length, he said, and concluded that the animal should never have been moved.

“Zoos have come a reasonably long way, but not far enough fast enough,” he said.

A few yards away, Mara Silverberg, 30, said she was unimpressed by zoo Director Mark Goldstein’s emotional, televised announcement of Hannibal’s death.

“I’m going to start paying more attention to find out if this was a fluke or more of a problem with management,” she said.

But other visitors did not fault the zoo. Ron Gordon, a Van Nuys car dealer, said the incident had made him wonder whether the zoo should find another method of moving elephants. Still, he said, he sympathized. “It’s hard moving something that big,” he said.

“We’re concerned about the keepers because we know how hard it is on them to lose an animal,” said Greg Cuprys of Burbank, a zoo regular.

As the rain streamed down, Cuprys readjusted a plastic bag he had wrapped around his head. “I can’t believe I’m standing here,” he said. But he did not move.

Next to him, Roslyn Philipson, a proofreader and self-described “zoo nut” from Long Beach, said she was here because she needed to be with others who felt as sad as she.

“I wanted to talk to other people because I feel so terrible,” she said, interrupting herself to call out to the elephants by name. Gita, Billy, Becky and Dixie will miss Hannibal, she said, and so will she.

Philipson said she had brought a bouquet of roses to toss into the empty exhibit area where Hannibal once lived. But then, concerned that another animal might come along and eat it, she gave the flowers to a keeper instead.