 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Christian Science Monitor, April 18, 2003
With the world in turmoil and the daily news filled with man's inhumanity to man, now seems a perfect time for lighthearted distraction. It's spring, and the circus is coming to town!
Clowns and popcorn seem the order of the day for my grandchildren, who are exposed to the tenor of grim television news like everyone else, but, not so fast--
Long before they were born, I went on a safari to Kenya. There is no way to forget my first view of an elephant. It was never simply one elephant; it was always a cluster, a herd, a family. Often there would be a baby with its mother, the little one always very close by; the guide explained that in that situation he was especially careful to keep his distance. A female elephant could turn fierce if her young were threatened. One could call it being instinctively protective, but who would challenge the notion that an elephant could feel as we do for our own flesh and blood?
The vision of elephant families moving freely through the plain is one I can not reconcile with what passes for entertainment in most circuses. No elephants sit on small stools or dance on hind legs in Africa, and how they are taught to do so is one issue that has driven more and more American communities--Quincy Massachusetts, Takoma Park, Maryland, Hollywood, Florida, Stamford, Connecticut, among others--to ban live animal acts. (Animal acts are banned nationwide in Ireland, Finland, Israel, India, Sweden, and restricted in many other countries. )
People like me, who once enjoyed the hoopla, the very idea and excitement of tigers jumping through fire hoops, never questioned the means to those ends.
But it's not what I thought. It's not a pat on an animal's head and peanuts that encourages elephants to become unpaid actors.
Carol Buckley worked in circuses for fifteen years and now runs The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. She shelters emotionally disturbed and injured elephants, "every one mismanaged in captivity by humans." She explains, " Traditionally, circus elephants are chained by two opposite legs, the chains fastened to metal stakes in the ground to keep them in place all day and all night when not performing." She confirms that elephants are universally mistreated, "managed by the use of force and intimidation, controlled by bullhooks--or worse--used where they will cause the greatest pain."
Former animal trainers have admitted that muzzles, whips, hidden shock devices, electric prods and even baseball bats are used to tame and train, and newly captured animals are tied down and beaten until they learn to comply. Confined elephants show signs of psychological stress by spending much of their time bobbing their heads or swaying side to side. In the wild, elephants walk many miles a day; in captivity they are chained --some most of their lives-- forced to endure extreme temperatures, to travel long distances crammed into box cars. Large circuses travel up to 48 weeks of the year, and trainers sometimes withhold food and water to reduce the embarrassment of untimely excrement.
It is of course, not only about elephants. Bears may be muzzled, have their noses broken and paws burned to teach them to walk on their hind legs. Tigers have been burned jumping through those hoops of fire. Typically when not performing, tigers are kept in cages with hardly room to turn around, where they eat and sleep and defecate. When circus animals rebel for behaving as their true natures dictate, they are punished, occasionally shot and killed.
Kelly Tansy of Spokane, Washington, worked as a clown for one of the largest circus companies in America some years ago. He is one of many former circus employees now testifying about performing animals' mistreatment. He confirms that barbaric abuse is still universal. "Wild animals who are in confinement in the chaotic environment of a circus must be beaten down until they have become intimidated...I have seen tigers hit with hockey sticks, a chimp put in solitary confinement as punishment."
When these animals are enslaved, forced through cruelty and intimidation to dance, ride bicycles or perform other unnatural "entertainments", is this a fit spectacle for my small grandchildren?
As members of the highest species, I think it is our responsibility to show compassion towards those who are helpless, even if they are not members of our own denomination. To stay away proves the better lesson for them: Even if they are "only animals," we know they think and suffer and mourn. I don't want my grandchildren to see them as captives in a side show, tormented and brutalized into unnatural displays for our amusement. I want them to see the animals as I saw them in Africa--free, wild, and true to themselves, as nature intended them to be.