There’s a general buzz of excitement on local blogs and Facebook right now, as there always is when the circus train arrives in town. Families are excitedly planning their circus visits and are anticipating the parade of animals from the train through downtown. And I am profoundly sad.
I went to circuses as a child. I remember the excitement, the loud music, the smell of sawdust and popcorn. And I remember the toy whips they were selling one year. I chose a woven purple one because purple was my favorite color. And then I watched the tigers wend their way through the narrow tunnel of cages to the larger cage, where they snarled and swatted at the long black whip smacking loudly in front of them.
A friend of mine came home with me from the circus. She wanted to see the purple whip I’d gotten and she smacked it in the air as she’d seen the tiger handler doing. She didn’t mean to, but she hit me with the whip. It struck my leg and my eyes stung with tears. I knew it was an accident, so I tried to hide how much it hurt. I didn’t want her to feel bad. But the sting stayed with me for much of the afternoon, and I thought of the purple whip, the toy whip, so much smaller than the whip that threatened the tigers.
Creative Commons: Walt Hubis
The next time I went to the circus was as an adult, a student of animals and public policy, on what the circus claimed was a behind the scenes tour, to show our class of animal welfare students they truly had nothing to hide. But there was no behind the scenes part to our tour — we arrived to find we’d merely been given tickets.
One of my classmates recognized a friend, standing in front of the entrance, wearing a sign with a picture of the baby elephant who had died after being forced to perform while sick. She greeted him, hugging him awkwardly around his sign. As we turned to go up the stairs, families streamed past us, but we were stopped. And searched.
Inside, I smelled the familiar sawdust and popcorn, heard the loud music, felt the excitement of the children around me. I knew so much more than I did when I was a child at the circus. I’d heard the former elephant trainer speak about the brutal training methods, about how the only somewhat safe way to work with a circus elephant is to beat the spirit out of her with a bullhook. I’d learned so much more about the lives of animals in the wild, of their social structure, their emotional connections.
And so, when the circus elephants came into the ring, and the music blared “I’m proud to be an American because at least I know I’m free,” as I looked around at the cheering children around me, I felt the sting of that whip again, and I cried. For the elephants, and for the children, who were not cruel, who just didn’t know. Might never know. And I swore in that moment that any children I would bring into this world would know. And their lives would be full and rich with experiences, but a circus with animals would never be one of them.
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