Jaunted

Ringling Vet Tech Writes: Elephant Handlers Draw Blood Ringling's Vet-Tech, Deborah Fahrenbruck, wrote in an e-mail to owner Ken Feld, that an elephant handler, during a show, hooked an elephant under the trunk three times and behind the leg in an attempt to line her up. Fahrenbruck wrote that backstage she saw "blood in small pools dripped along the length of the rubber and all the way inside the barn" and stated "[W]e had an elephant dripping blood all over the arena floor during the show from being hooked." After telling Elephant Dept. Head, Troy Metzler, she was banned from the elephant barn. Ringling Says: Hide Elephant Beatings In 2004, after Bay Area TV stations showed video of a Ringling elephant handler stabbing and jabbing Angelica, a chained 7-year-old elephant, with a bullhook, Ringling's Vet-Tech, Deborah Fahrenbruck suggested not to stop such attacks but to hide them by putting up a "tent wall." Ringling allows employees to hit and jab elephants and not consider this abuse. Unnatural Acts - Stolen Lives ... The Sad Lives of Animals Used In Entertainment Animals in circuses suffer isolation, monotony and deprivation. For most of their lives elephants are kept chained in place or penned in parking lots. Tigers, camels, zebras, horses, dogs and other animals are kept in small, cramped cages. Housing is built for ease of transportation, not for the comfort of the animals. Intimidation and physical violence are standard training and handling practices. The fact that all of this mistreatment is allowed testifies to the inadequacy of the laws regulating the care of animals in circuses. Ringling claims that their use of elephants is "helping" to save the highly endangered Asian elephants. Saving species involves respect, and requires that habitat be preserved. The use of animals in circuses perpetuates the view that animals exist to be exploited by humans and don't have lives of their own. The animals' living conditions, the tricks they are forced to perform and the costumes they are dressed in have nothing to do with their natural behavior and are contrary to their biological needs as individuals and as species. As Desmond Morris said, "[There is] something biologically immoral about keeping animals in enclosures where their behavior patterns, which have taken millions of years to evolve, can find no expression." Circuses are counter-educational because animals are forced to live in unnatural conditions, "perform" unnatural acts thus misrepresenting who animals are or how they naturally live and act.