Since I can remember I have alway felt slightly aversive towards the Circus. Ethan however has been keen to go for a while now and when we saw signs for the 'Ringling Bros. Circus Extreme' in town we agreed to book tickets to take Ethan. Before the day arrived I found out that they have animals in their performances, this in itself isn't a major issue but there was some bad press associated with this as they apparently used Elephants in it. Reading their website it is all very positive on how they train the animals but I wanted to go with an open mind and non judgmental view.
On the day we headed in and the show opened with lots of excitement and some amazing acts. Then
the elephants came out. I found this part of the show pretty hard, this just isn't where we should see these stunning creatures. Having seen them in South Africa in a natural habitat, this peformance for our pleasure just felt horribly uncomfortable, their eyes were sad and they seemed to have lost a part of themselves to me. Sadly it didn't get much better. The tigers were yet to come. These powerful, strong and fierce creatures were all extremely upset, they crept towards the master when called with a flick of his whip, on their bellies with teeth bared, crawling along, passive, terrified and completely unnatural. I couldn't bring myself to watch it and tears poured down my face. I am usually quite tough but this just tore me apart.There were were gobsmackingly, awesome human acts plus some poodles that were totally positively trained and had a ball! Tails wagging, barking their heads off and racing around. You could see the relationship between dogs and trainers. There was a woman shot out of a cannon and a group of fab Parkour guys.
When we left the circus we all agreed that the show was amazing without the animals, those acts tainted our experience which was such a shame. Apparently animals will be phased out by 2018 from the Ringling Bros circus, it's a good thing but it really could come much sooner.
No comments:
Post a Comment