SANTA MARIA, Calif. – Did the King of Pop stone the King of Beasts at Neverland’s zoo? Or did he conspire with the two cantankerous chimps that bit his bedroom maids?

As Michael Jackson’s trial grinds on, Santa Barbara County prosecutors seem almost as eager to nail him for mishandling wild animals at Neverland ranch as they are to convict him of child molestation.

Three times in the past eight days of trial, prosecutors badgered three different witnesses about an incident 15 years ago when Jackson and a pal threw stones at the lion’s cage to make the sluggish beast roar.

And before that, they harped on Jackson’s failure to rein in two pet chimpanzees, Bubbles and Max, who bit two of Jackson’s maids and smeared feces in his bedroom.

You would have thought prosecutor Ron Zonen had solved the Zodiac murders when he pounced on former Jackson pal Wade Robson, now 23, about the lion caper, which took place when the witness was 8.

“Wasn’t there a time when you and Mr. Jackson were throwing stones at the lion … to get him to make some noise?” Zonen said in a snippy attention-getting staccato.

“Stones? They were more like pebbles,” said Robson, who claimed the items were thrown at the cage, not the animal.

“Weren’t they good-size stones?” Zonen sniped. “About a quarter-inch,” Robson said, looking quizzically at his accuser.

When defense lawyer Tom Mesereau asked him to explain the stone throwing, Robson said, “The lion was in his cage, not doing anything. We wanted to hear him roar.”

“You threw stones at the cage – you were not trying to hurt the lion?” Mesereau asked.

“No,” Robson said.

Then Robson’s mom got the third-degree about the lion from DA Tom Sneddon.

He asked if Wade Robson and Jackson’s stone-throwing amounted to “animal cruelty.”

“Absolutely not. Michael loves all animals,” Joy Robson replied.

And even then, it wasn’t over.

When Neverland ranch manager Joe Marcus took the stand a week later, prosecutor Gordon Auchincloss grilled him about the lion affair.

“Have you ever seen Mr. Jackson throw stones at the lion?”

“No,” Marcus replied.

Auchincloss demanded a description of the lion’s cage.

“It’s a cage with a few toys in it … a few logs.” The cage is made of “1/8-inch wire configured in squares – you probably couldn’t put two fingers through it,” Marcus said.

But Auchincloss wasn’t satisfied.

“Have you ever seen any of the other animals abused at Neverland?”

Marcus tersely replied, “I’ve never seen ANY of the animals abused.”

Earlier in the case, prosecutors were obsessed with the antics of Jackson’s pet chimps of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Bubbles and Max.

Prodded by Zonen, ex-maid Blanca Francia said Bubbles, the first chimp who lived with Jackson at his parents’ Encino, Calif., home in the late ’80s, bit her twice.

“The monkey didn’t like the diaper” it was made to wear when it spent time in Jackson’s bedroom so it sometimes removed the cloth and soiled things, the ex-maid said.

Yet in out-takes from Martin Bashir’s documentary “Living With Michael Jackson” the pop idol boasted Bubbles knew how to “flush the toilet” and “would go himself.”

But Francia and Jackson agreed on Bubbles’ fate.

He got too big, too wild. He had to be taken away to a farm,” Francia said.

“When chimps get to a certain age, they can become dangerous. They can take your finger off,” Jackson said. “He’s with a caretaker and many other chimps now.”

Another ex-maid, Adrian McManus, griped about a different pet chimp she believed was called “Max” who spent time in the pop star’s master suite at Neverland.

“Did they have cages?” Zonen queried.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“The chimp bit you?” he asked.

“That’s correct,” McManus said.

“You changed its diapers?” Zonen asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“You had to clean monkey droppings off the floor?”

“No, on the walls. Sometimes monkeys get wild,” McManus said.

Zonen appeared satisfied with the answer – for what it implied about the chimp’s owner.

But for all the Neverland animal stories prosecutors keep dredging up, there’s one they seem eager to forget.

In his opening statement, defense lawyer Tom Mesereau said Jackson’s 13-year-old accuser and his brother, 12, got caught pelting trash and other objects at the elephants as the boys rode the Ferris wheel.

Can the elephants’ trainer be far from the witness stand?