To the editor:
For several years I’ve written letters in this paper informing people of the abuse that goes on behind the scenes to train wild animals for circuses. Now with the circus due to come to Presque isle in a couple of weeks and seeing wild bears riding scooters are one of the acts to entertain the crowds, I’m forced once again to appeal to your common sense.
Please tell me how you get wild animals to perform these unnatural acts. I have read that trainers don’t do it with love and lighthearted cajoling. They separate the very young from their parents. They use abusive methods such as tying them down, extreme captivity, withholding food, beatings and whipping and, in the case of elephants, using extremely sharp bullhooks to jab them to get them to move the way they want them to move. Don’t believe me? If using your common sense isn’t enough, try looking “circus abuse” up on the internet.
Just one trainer from Florida whom circuses use to get animals “tamed” for their acts has received almost 300 fines for animal abuse, Fox News reported. However, the money trainers receive for these crimes is so lucrative, and the fines so small in comparison, they just keep abusing those animals. Ringling Bros. had to close their circus because the courts levied sich prohibition fines against them they had to stop exotic animal acts altogether, according to Fox News.
Common sense tells me, if audiences stop patronizing smaller traveling circuses who insist on using these abusive wild animal acts they will forced t use other human acts in order to survive. If people vote with their wallets these circuses will change and survive as is witnessed across the rest of the country where they’ve taken this stand.
In my eyes, the only thing worse than abusing animals ourselves is paying someone else to do it just so we can be entertained for a few minutes.
Clare Kierstead
