Pop Star Michael Jackson Offers Home To Gorilla Ivan

Michael Jackson is going ape over a department-store gorilla.

Ivan, the gorilla who has lived 25 years in a concrete cage at Tacoma's B&I Circus Store, has been offered a new home at the pop music star's personal fantasyland zoo in California.

A National Geographic television documentary stirred public sympathy last year for the 28-year-old ape, who has never seen another gorilla since his capture in the Congo, in Africa.

Several zoos offered to adopt the gorilla. But none of the offers quite matched Jackson's 2,700-acre retreat north of Santa Barbara that includes a zoo populated with chimpanzees, zebras, llamas, giraffes and a lion.

"Because of all the news articles, Michael all of sudden feels sorry for this particular critter and wants to give it a home,"said Capt. Jim Zobel, exotic-animal specialist for the California Department of Fish and Game.

Zobel said Jackson has applied for permits to build a new facility to house Ivan and possibly another gorilla.

Jackson's publicist in Los Angeles said she didn't know anything about the offer.

Ivan's owner, Ron Irwin, recently turned down a bid to move Ivan to Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, saying he was negotiating with a private facility in California.

Irwin would not identify Jackson as the owner, but described facility as "probably one of the best situations, if not in the world certainly in the U.S., for a gorilla."

At his California home, Ivan would have indoor and outdoor habitats and a female companion, he said.

But animal-rights activists wonder if the fantasyland is the best place for the gorilla.

Seattle's zoo may be better because it could take Jackson years to build a gorilla compound and find a female companion for Ivan, said Mitchell Fox, spokesman for the Progressive Animal Welfare Society in Lynnwood. Fox said he has written letter to Jackson asking him to drop his offer.

"Michael Jackson certainly has the wherewithal to build a Taj Mahal for gorillas," Fox said. "But we would just like him to know the options."

Jackson's retreat is regularly inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and gets good ratings, said Homer Malaby, USDA animal-care specialist based in San Francisco.

"There would be no objections to that animal being moved to California," Zobel said. "There's no question if Michael would build the facilities, they would more than meet our specifications."