With each repeated blow, the pitchfork makes a sickening thwack as it slams into Anne the elephant’s hide.
She flinches, at one point even appearing to lose her footing under the weight of a particularly savage strike.
I don’t find clowns funny and I don’t like circuses. I never have. As a child, my parents would take us to the Shriner’s circus and I’d sit in the stands eating cotton candy wondering which of the three rings I should focus on. It really didn’t matter because I found them all boring. I never quite understood what the attraction was in watching a dog ride on an elephant’s back or a tiger jumping through hoops of fire. I would have much preferred watching a National Geographic video depicting these same animals in the wild than I would watching them perform in an artificial setting surrounded by guys wearing orange wigs and sporting red balls attached to their noses. I just didn’t get it.
When I became a dad and had three children of my own, I reluctantly took them to a circus performance. I thought it would be wrong to deprive them of seeing a circus just because their father didn’t find chimpanzees wearing dresses particularly amusing. Besides, I thought, I might have been wrong. Perhaps there was something I was missing. So I took them, bought cotton candy and caramel covered popcorn and sat in the bleachers wondering which of the three rings I should focus on. I soon discovered that it still didn’t matter. They were all as boring as I remembered them to be.
And now, when I see videos like the one below, I am even more convinced that circuses should be avoided at all costs. Anne is a 58-year-old elephant with an arthritic knee working in a UK circus. The following clip was secretly filmed.
We all know what will happen to Anne when she finally retaliates and crushes her abuser’s head. She’ll be called rogue and it is she who will be referred to as the unstable one. Anne will then be shot.
Do Anne and other animals suffering a similar fate a favor. Stay away from circuses which showcase wild animals. A well run zoo, while not a perfect environment, is always a better choice for watching animals than a traveling circus.
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