Giant Elephant Wants to Hear From Kids!

PETA Invites Children to Send Drawings, Letters, and More to Ella the Elephant Statue

For Immediate Release:
June 13, 2017

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

Ella the Elephant, the life-size elephant statue outside PETA’s office in Washington, D.C., is hugely popular with passersby—many of them children—who often stop to pose for photos with her. Now, kids from across the country can interact with her by sending drawings, letters asking questions about her life, notes pledging never to go to a circus that uses animals, and more.

Kids are encouraged to write to Ella at the following address:

Ella the Elephant

c/o PETA

1536 16^th St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20036

The Ella statue represents an elephant who was once dragged from town to town and forced to perform tricks in a circus, and she has a mammoth personality. Her favorite color is blue, which represents the sky and freedom to her. Her favorite song is “Nellie the Elephant”—about an elephant who packed her trunk and escaped the circus when she heard her herd calling—and her favorite book is Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, because “[a] person’s a person, no matter how small.” And like the staffers inside PETA’s office, elephants are vegan—they eat almost 300 pounds of plants a day!

“When children see the teardrops on Ella the Elephant’s face, they immediately understand that circuses are no fun for animals,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is inviting kids to write to Ella and share what they’ve learned about elephants, why they’ll never go to a circus that uses animals, and anything else that they want to tell her.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—notes that elephants in captivity are denied everything that’s natural and important to them. Baby ones used in circuses are taken from their loving mothers and beaten, whipped, and electrically shocked to coerce them into performing tricks out of fear of punishment. When they’re not being forced to perform, elephants in traveling circuses are kept chained and endure living in unnatural, restrictive settings such as parking lots and arena back rooms.

For more information, please visit PETA’s blog.