How a front yard turned into an elephant habitat

Some homeowners deck their yards with garden gnomes; others go for pink flamingos. Christina Yin and Michael Maung have all those yard decorations beat, in terms of size at least. The front yard at their Spring Street house is quickly becoming a menagerie of elephant statues.

Any large elephant, sculpture or living, is a pretty hard thing to miss, but these elephants really stand out. The larger of their two shed-sized elephants is covered in reflective panels, making it look like a disco ball stretched into a mastodon. Next to it is a slightly smaller, but far less glitzy elephant made of driftwood.

Despite being there for years, these elephants have recently gotten a wave of new attention from passersby, and some curious readers have asked the Voice to look into the story behind this unique display.

In fact, Yin and Maung’s yard elephants represent only a fraction of the extensive collection they’ve accumulated over the years. Maung, by far the more avid collector of the pair, says his obsession stems from his Burmese heritage. Since he was born on a Wednesday morning, his animal sign under the Burmese zodiac is a tusked elephant (a Wednesday evening birth means untusked elephant).

Basically, he’s always had a fondness for the gentle giants. About 20 years ago, around the time he met his wife Yin, he started his hobby of collecting elephantine sculptures, trinkets and other artwork.

“It used to keep me up all the time — his (collection) costs a lot of money,” Yin said. “But he told me: ‘I’m not drinking; I’m not smoking. This is my hobby.'”

Years ago, the couple pooled their talents to open a Burmese-Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto, the aptly named Green Elephant Gourmet on Middlefield Road. Their new eatery gave them a perfect place to showcase their collection of elephant figurines instead of keeping them mothballed in the garage.

About two years ago, Maung said he found the eye-catching disco-ball elephant statue on sale for about $2,000 at a T.J. Maxx store in Cupertino. Naturally, he liked it, and he thought it would make a great attraction to draw in customers. At the time, he said, he was partly inspired by the Chinese restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s, which often plants a large horse statue outside its entrance.

Maung hired a four-man crew to help him transport the statue, only to learn his new purchase was as bulky as, well, an elephant. He still isn’t sure what the elephant is made of beneath its reflective covering, but it certainly is heavy, he said. It was simply too big to fit in front of their restaurant since it would block the walkway at the shopping center, he said. It also became clear the statue wouldn’t work inside the restaurant either, since its mammoth size would it make it impossible to ignore — it would be, in all senses, an elephant in the room.

So that’s how the large elephant ultimately landed in front of the couple’s house, just to the right of the driveway for all to see. Maung says he isn’t disappointed. In fact, he’s quite happy having his showpiece elephants right next to his porch. They’ve become used to people stopping to take a look or snap a photo.

“It’s OK, I like having it at my home,” Maung said.

In fact, this isn’t the first time his grand plans for a restaurant elephant wound up decorating the yard. About two years earlier, he went through pretty much the same series of events with the driftwood elephant, which was another T.J. Maxx find. That time, he tried to paint the elephant green to match the restaurant’s name. But the paint didn’t adhere well to the wood, and the shade of green looked really “ugly,” Yin said. Besides, even that smaller elephant was too big to go outside the restaurant.

So why didn’t Maung learn his lesson? Why did he decide two years later to buy an even bigger elephant statue for the restaurant?

“I asked him the same question,” Yin said. “He just said, ‘I love it — some day I’m going to use it.”

One of these days, Yin says, they’ll have to figure out something to do with their growing collection. Friends have suggested opening an art gallery, and she’s been prodding her husband to think about culling his menagerie.

“I tell him after we retire we should sell some of your pieces,” she said. “He says, ‘No, No. I think I want to keep it.'”

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