Circus Fun Except for Animals Between Cage & Stage

Posted on Tue, Apr. 20, 2004
Philly.com

by Stu Bykofsky

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/columnists/stu_bykofsky

LIKE YOU, once upon a time I loved the circus.

The dazzling colors, the loud music, the exotic costumes, the
death-defying feats of superbly trained artists, and, of course, the
animals.

Since I love animals, I enjoyed seeing them up close - gargantuan
elephants dancing as delicately as ballerinas, prancing Arabian
steeds, stunning Bengals sitting up and pawing the air like your
house tabby would never do on command.

I quit circuses a few years back when I came to understand that what
was fun for me was misery for the animals, the very animals I say I
love.

On the circus's opening night, in spotty rain and bitter chill, seven
animal activists handed out leaflets in front of the Wachovia
Spectrum, protesting what they see as the cruelty to animals that is
part of the circus.

Like me, Marianne Bessey used to like circuses, but her thinking
changed during a visit to Africa where she got to see elephants'
natural behavior.

It was not the same as the circus, says the 42-year-old lawyer, who
lives with four rescued dogs.

As a veteran protester - 20 times at a half-dozen circuses - Bessey
knows she has little chance of stopping people from entering when they
already have tickets in hand. She's there to plant a thought in their
minds for the future.

As she and other women hand out literature, a car full of young men
drives by, heading to the Aerosmith concert next door.

"I love animals," one shouts from the moving car, "for dinner." His
mates laugh at his stunning originality.

The women shrug it off. The wind pressing against their picket signs
is more annoying.

If you are trying to help animals, being taunted comes with the
territory.

Of the seven protesters, six are women, and I ask myself why it is
that men - such as the pinheads in the passing car - are so
uninterested in animal cruelty, except in committing it. (For their
part, women bear guilt when it comes to fur, the narcissistic epitome
of animal suffering.)

Ringling Bros. claims "they use an elephant's natural behavior and
build on that and decide which tricks the elephants will perform,"
Bessey says, adding that some tricks are not natural behavior.

Ringling Bros. public relations director Jennifer Maninger says you
can't get a 10,000-pound animal to do something it doesn't want to do,
and elephants are kept in pens most of the time with toys such as tree
limbs and traffic cones to play with.

Valerie Trivigno, 43, a staffing coordinator from South Philly, says
the animals are beaten into submission.

Ringling Bros., the nation's largest circus, is accused of mistreating
its Asian elephants in a federal lawsuit filed in 2000 by animal
welfare groups. It alleges that circus employees routinely beat the
elephants with sharp bull hooks, keep elephants in chains for long
periods of time and forcibly remove baby elephants from their mothers
before they are properly weaned.

Maninger says the bull hook is an appropriate instrument to "guide"
the elephant, adding that the circus is fighting the lawsuit.

The lawyers will battle that out, but Trivigno adds something that's
not open to challenge: The animals travel in boxcars and are cooped
up most of the year as they shuffle between "cage and stage. How can
they be happy?" she asks.

Maninger responds that even the big cats have "habitats" to live in
and are rarely kept in small cages for extended periods.

The animals get exercise when they perform, rehearse or get
socialization time.

It sounds almost idyllic.

On the road, circus life is tough for all performers, but the humans
are there by choice.

Wilmington's Annette Swartz, a 40ish woman who does humane education
outreach for Delaware Action for Animals, cites the "confinement
factor" as being hard on animals and urges you to go to
www.circuses.com for information about how the animals are treated.

I'm not going to tell you that Ringling Bros. is filled with nothing
but sadistic trainers who abuse animals, but I am going to tell you
that for the animals, being on the road for 50 weeks a year,
suffering the stress of constant transportation, being jammed in
cages, being denied most natural behavior, is itself an act of
cruelty."

If you love animals, think about that when the circus comes to town.

E-mail Stu Bykofsky at stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977.
This column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. For recent columns, go to
http://go.philly.com/byko.

Posted on SHARE Yahoo group Apr 22, 2004