Four Tons of Fun : Education: More than 100 blind children at Frances Blend School touch, tickle and climb aboard an 8 1/2-foot-tall, 26-year-old Indian elephant.

It was a touching scene.

More than 100 blind children--who until Monday could only dream of what an elephant looks like--stood in awe in front of a four-ton animal, their tiny hands reaching out.

Shyly, they held out fruit for the elephant to gently pick up with its trunk. They gingerly stroked its huge legs, tickled its ears and felt its tail. Then they climbed, giggling, on its back for a ride around the playground at their Hollywood school.

“I fed him a pear and he got it with his trunk! I think they use their trunks to eat,” said Marlow Howell, 10, of Granada Hills. “Do they have teeth on their trunks?”

Dornell Stephens, also 10, of South Los Angeles, gently ran his hands along the elephant’s trunk and legs. “The skin is soft. So is its hair,” he said.

But 11-year-old Soo Yi of Hollywood saw things differently through her fingertips. “Its skin is coarse. Its hair is rough,” she exclaimed.

Tai, an 8 1/2-foot-tall, 26-year-old Indian elephant, took it all in stride. Four-foot strides, at that.

The idea to bring an animal to children at the Frances Blend School, the nation’s only public day school for blind youngsters, was the result of a disappointing visit by a sightless child to the Los Angeles Zoo.

Elephants are 3-year-old Zachary Kline’s favorite animal--”Dumbo” is his favorite bedtime story. But zoo officials keep pachyderms and other animals out of visitors’ reach.

“He could hear birds singing and smell the flowers and touch the fences, but he was kind of bored until we walked by the elephants,” said Zachary’s mother, Bo Kline of Hollywood. “When he heard one blowing water through its trunk, he stood there 15 minutes, just listening.”

The zoo outing was frustrating, said the boy’s father, television producer and writer Steve Kline. When he got home, Kline called elephant trainer Gary Johnson. He remembered him from a TV series pilot about wildlife veterinarians that both had worked on.

Johnson invited Zachary to his 10-acre Perris ranch, where he and his wife, Kari, own eight elephants that are used in films, commercials, fairs and parades. The boy had so much fun that Kline asked if one of the animals could be used for show-and-tell at his son’s preschool class.

The entire student body turned out Monday when Johnson led Tai across the playground toward an eight-step, awning-covered stairway that reached to her broad back. Each child who climbed up was given a three-minute ride.

“It’s more like riding a bus than a car,” concluded 6-year-old Malissa Moreno of North Hollywood.

“More like a roller coaster than a car,” offered David Hernandez, 11, of Boyle Heights.

“Oh, it’s so bumpy. It rocked a lot,” explained Jorge Robas, 10, of Hollywood. “But it was cool. I wasn’t nervous at all.”

Christopher Hermosura, 9, of Panorama City was nervous, though. “I thought we might fall off. I couldn’t hold on much longer,” he said.

Jane Lim, an administrator at the school, said Tai gave all of the kids’ senses a workout. “Motion, height, smell, texture, sound, body movement. We’re very grateful,” she said.

Teacher Marie Hadaway put it another way.

“It reminds me of the story of the three blind men and the elephant,” she said. “The man who felt just its trunk said an elephant is shaped like a wet tube. The one who just felt its side said it is shaped like a wall. The one who only felt its tail said it was shaped like a rope.”

But her kids, Hadaway said, now know elephants front to back. And top to bottom.

Tai enjoyed it too. The elephant responded when Zachary Kline gave her trunk a hug. “Daddy, what’s Tai doing?” the boy asked.

“She’s kissing you,” Steve Kline replied.