Cynthia wrote on my Facebook Page last night: “If you still think elephants belong in a circus, you must have a heart of stone. I guess I would rather be ridiculed for my beliefs than to turn a blind eye.” With that, she accused me of being uncivil, promised never to read my books again, vowed to storm off my page, and then returned a number of times to argue some more. She seems drawn to what she perceives as martyrdom, another hero sacrificing her self for the animals. It is a big and familiar story..
And that is the challenge when it comes to caring for animals, it is very difficult to separate what makes us feel good from what is actually good for them.
I can’t say enough about my heart, Cynthia, we all got a good look at it last year when they took it out and refurbished it, and my cardiologist says it is beating so strongly that he doesn’t even want to see me for a year. It is rare than one can call up expert witnesses about your heart. I have a photo of it.
But in all honesty, a strong heart doesn’t make one right. I do not know if I am right, I only know what I believe. You will all have to make up your own mind, I am not telling you what to think. Many people were shocked at the very idea that there might be two sides to this story. That’s how I know it’s good to write about it.
“I still cannot believe you support this kind of human/animal relationship?,” write Julie Forbes, host of the Dog Show With Julie Forbes.”Is this really you writing this? I’m still in disbelief.” Julie, yes, this is me, I believe, and I hope you are well. As tempting as it is to say I am really the author of Fifty Shades of Grey, I admit authorship, and here I am, at it again. I like Julie, I trust she will recover. In America, it is a serious thing to be disagreed with.
But seriously Julie, if you understand how painful separation and relocation can be for animals when pulled from their lives and habitats, perhaps you would re-consider doing it to them again.
Cynthia is also welcome to disagree with me, I wouldn’t dream of running her off, and she seems to be on my page still, bristling with indignation and moral certainty. I wish I had her moral certainty, I live in a world of hues and grays.
To be honest, Cynthia was actually one of the more polite posters, animal conversations in America are much like political conversations, there is a lot of posturing and rage, not much listening. My favorite was one who said I was “blatantly stupid,” as opposed to just being stupid, which is what I am more often called and is perhaps closer to the truth. There is nothing blatant about my stupidity, it is pretty ordinary.
There is a lot of deja vu here, the argument reminds me of the early days of the carriage horse controversy. Almost the same words, the same responses. The irony of the concern for animals in our country right now for me is that the people with the strongest ideas about animals and their rights seem to know little or nothing about them. They don’t live with them, work with them, even see them much as a rule, they get their views and information from other sources than their lives – websites, blogs, books, stories.
I doubt Cynthia knows one thing more about elephants than she does about what people’s hearts are made of. I would be amazed if she had ever seen one. Do any of these people understand that there is no wild for these elephants, no natural life for the to return to, do they know that even if they were, these trained and domesticated animals would not survive there for a day? I guess not, and that is the really bad news for the elephants. The people deciding their futures don’t know a single thing about them.
Julie Forbes wrote quite passionately on my Facebook Page – she did seem incredulous that I would disagree with her – that I was off base in my writing about elephants. Imagine, she said, what P.T. Barnum’s Jumbo felt when he was being hauled to America, imagine how his family left behind felt when he was gone? I don’t know what Jumbo felt, I wrote back, animals don’t think in our words. I don’t know what his family thought either, but I imagine the way they reacted the same as any dog or cat pulled out of their litter and away from their mother’s teat.
They were anxious and confused, and then settled into their new routine.
It happens every day, countless thousands of times, and no one is (yet) banning cats and dogs or demanding their return to the wild.
Elephant abuse is part of this increasingly tragic story, but it is not the whole story.
Elephant handlers and trainers are one of the most committed and loving sub-cultures in the animal world, there is a vast literature about the work they do with the big elephants and the extraordinary attachments – much like horses and dogs – that elephants have for people.
We forget at the peril of the Asian elephants that they are domesticated animals, they have lived and worked with people for thousands of years, the elephants being chased off the circuses could not live in nature even if it existed for them, then can only be contained and fed and hidden from view of most people. It is an outrageous injustice to tar them with so broad and ugly a brush.
I do not believe it is criminal for animals to entertain people, this has been a profound benefit to them and to us for all of history.
I have been privileged to know some of these elephant people, and write to them and talk to some, you will not ever see or hear their stories, it is not fashionable to write about them or about their great love of the animals they worked with.Nobody seems to care about that side of the story. But they are real too, anyone who presumes to speak for the elephants should know their stories as well as the grim stories of abuse that have come to define the elephant’s future. Some elephants were abused, many were not and are not. Many are dearly loved and will be painfully missed.
One of the most frequent arguments about the elephants is that their removal from the circus is wonderful news for them all, now they can return to their natural lives in the wild. For me, this comes under the category I call “Loving Animals To Death.” The animal rights groups who have lobbied so long and aggressively to remove the elephants do not believe animals should work with people, ever. They consider work for animals abusive and exploitive. in New York, their leaders have said repeatedly the carriage horses would be better off dead than hauling carriages in Central Park.
People rejoicing about the new life of the elephants ought to know that there will be no paradise for them, they are in real trouble now.
The animal rights people are clear, they don’t care if the animals live or die, only that the be taken away from the evil people who live and work with them. Animal lovers ought to know better.
Ringling Bros. is the wealthiest and most powerful circus in North America, perhaps the world.
Other, smaller and poorer circuses are following their head, running away from the endless legal and cultural conflicts of the lavishly-funded animal rights movement and abandoning their elephants. This is not a humane decision – Ringling Bros. has not been found guilty of abusing their elephants, quite the opposite. Nor do they admit any kind of abuse. It is a corporate decision. Legal fights with cities showering the circuses with all kinds of regulations and restrictions in the name of animal rights are expensive to fight and cause bad publicity and confusion. It is cheaper and wiser to let them go. It does not mean it is the right decision for the elephants, or a moral one.
Corporations don’t like controversy or legal bills, they reduce profits, so the elephants are being sacrificed to a movement that is as hysterical and misinformed at times as it is fervent and angry. That is the tenor of conflict in our world, just look at my Facebook Page. Think of it this way: many more dogs are abused than circus elephants, imagine the uproar if politicians voted to ban dogs from cities and towns rather than punish their abusers.
Surely, there has been abuse, as there is abuse of horses, dogs and cats.
Abuse is illegal in every state in the union, people who abuse animals can and should be prosecuted and punished. Removing entire species of animals without making any concerted effort to improve their lives and keep them safe and alive seems short-sighted to me, a literal case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. That this idea – improving the lives of elephants rather than banning them and sending them out into a dangerous future- is considered hateful and stupid to so many people is a symptom, not a measured response.
The World Wildlife Fund reports that one half of the species of animals on the earth have vanished since 1980. Asian elephants will soon join the list. Our children will never see them or know them.
No one – surely none of the people raging on my Facebook Page – wants to take any responsibility for the fact that there is no place for these elephants to go, and no wild left for the Asian elephants of the circus to be sent to.
It’s a lot easier to blame the evildoers in the circuses, ban the elephants and turn away as most of them are slaughtered or vanish from our consciousness. I can almost guarantee this will happen, it has happened to half of the animals on our plant. The Asian elephants will not flourish, in all likelihood, anymore than the carriage horses would if taken away from their safe and regulated stables.
The truth is that there is nowhere for most of them to go, and none of the righteous people on my Facebook Page will be paying much attention when they wither on a handful of preserves or go to slaughter. No one will think or speak of them again. How many beleaguered and impoverished rescue farms can afford to pay $65,000 a year to keep a retired elephant alive, and for how long? Ringling Bros. is taking eleven to a preserve. What about the scores of others?
More than 160,000 horses go to slaughter each year because there is no place to send them, how will the unemployed elephants fare? The horses are a powerful cautionary tale, if we care to listen. The outrage addicts on Facebook will be long gone, onto their next fury. The elephants will pay for our selfishness and laziness. The emotionalizing of animals and their lives is good for people, not for animals.
In Asia, there are few preserves left, almost all are severely under-funded, poorly protected, beset by climate change, development and poachers. Preserves are the least safe place in the world for most elephants, almost any one would be better off in a Ringling Bros. tent. If you want to talk about the facts relating to the welfare of animals in our greedy and selfish world, here are some. There are plenty more available to those who want to know.
I am happy to turn to this issue again, and I’m sorry it upsets people, not my purpose. No one is making you read what I write, but I hope you do and will consider it. If it’s too much to bear, relief is just a click away.
It is time we began thinking seriously and talking about the future of animals in our world, not only their mistreatment. The animal rights movement is built on the idea that human beings are abusive and cruel and that animals need to be liberated from us. I believe most animal lovers are good and wish to do the right thing and that animals need to say with us. For me, the right thing is keeping animals in sight, in our everyday lives, and doing whatever it takes to make them safe and healthy.
I live with animals, and have come to know and love them in a blessed way. They deserve the right to survive in our world. I believe they need to be seen and known by humans if they are to be saved and protected. I believe a movement that cares about animals will seek ways to keep them in our every day lives, not remove them so that Cynthia can feel superior to me on Facebook. More to come.