Let Me Live in Lucy the Elephant

Of all the places one could choose to make their forever home, Lucy the Elephant, who resides in Margate City, New Jersey, is not a bad pick. I’ve packed my bags and thrown everything I own into four plastic Tupperware bins. They are lined up in a row in the hallway, waiting for my movers. Toot toot. I’m coming to New Jersey. Lucy! I am coming for you.

According to the New York Times, Lucy is 138 years old, flirty, thriving, and ready to accept Airbnb guests for the very reasonable price of $138 a night. Lucy’s owner, Richard Helfant, allowed Airbnb to kit out her interior, which is painted “gastric pink” to mimic the interior of an actual elephant, with Victorian-era decorations, including but not limited to a very nice-looking platform bed with a canopy. I understand completely that this is a marketing stunt for Airbnb, but I also understand that this is good news for Lucy’s continued existence, because she will make money off the people walking through her intestines and sleeping in them. Happy for her, but I have a suggestion that I’d like someone to entertain: What if I moved into Lucy for the rest of my life?

Sure, the bathroom is not inside the elephant herself, but outside in a “mobile trailer.” There is a bathtub inside the elephant, so that’s at least something. I can’t tell if there’s a kitchen, but I imagine the Jersey Shore’s off-season food offerings are sort of okay? Surely I can find a Subway or a nice Panera. I will forage in the dunes. I will stand on my tip-toes to gaze out the portholes that are her eyes—blue, for Frank Sinatra, I’m told. I will stare at the Atlantic and have a nice think.