Tell Them What It Was

The Circus is gone. I guess the Circus song is gone too. The only place I had the opportunity to pet an elephant was at the circus and they are gone too. Even if you are a wealthy person who can afford an African safari trip don’t necessarily get up close enough to an elephant to pet them but the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus provided to the delight of children and adults that live and close up experience of wild animal as well as skillfully trained acrobats and funny clowns. It was an experience like no other in life and it is sad that future generations will not be able to experience it anymore.

I find it odd that video games like Grand Theft Auto is popular with its extreme violence that anyone can play for hours on end is not banned as harmful to humans. They said that the Circus was harmful to wild animals. Well, why couldn’t they simply provide a large amount of land behind the Circus show for the animals to have some freedom? They could have made their lives more humane and still put on a delightful show. Now we have the popular and expensive Cirque Du Soleil shows that I think is cruel to humans with their constant contortions they do to their bodies. Barnum was right when he said,” There is a sucker born every day.”

It is an end of an era. They could have tweaked the circus into being a positive experience with anyone to be able to see exotic animals up close and personal. It could have been an educational and positive animal learning experience. Instead the Circus is gone along with a horrible reputation for cruelty to animals. Throughout the years the reputation at least got a bit better when they abolished the side show where they exploited human oddities like the bearded lady or the tallest man or someone born with three legs which doesn’t seem to be so odd anymore. We are more tolerant of each other these days.  

The Ringling Circus show entertained all for 146 years. The last performance featured 14 lions and tigers. The Ringmaster had his job for 18 years. What kind of job can he get now with that kind of experience on his resume? This Circus began in 1871. The elephants were removed from the performance last year after there were fierce and very vocal protests from animal rights groups. That kind of publicity had already failing ticket prices falling even further. I still don’t understand why people would go to Disney or to a movie where you are not entertained by a single live person or animal group? The Circus had a 500 person crew, 100 animals and a mile long train to transport the crew to your town. Yes, entertainment by delivery!

It is the closing of history and a historic form of entertainment.   The Tiger Master said, “People are not really concerned with wildlife unless they can see it, feel it and enjoy it as much as I do.”Hopefully people will still support well run zoos.