Circus Criticized for Treatment of Elephants
By Linda Conner Lambeck
STAFF WRITER – ConnPost
BRIDGEPORT — Ask students in Melinda Stygles’ second-grade class at Roosevelt School what they like best about the circus and, overwhelmingly, the cheers go to clowns, jugglers and high-wire acrobats.
Not one of the kids mentioned elephants, let alone a bloody, bandaged pachyderm.
But that’s what fellow Roosevelt students and their parents saw Tuesday afternoon as school let out. Sort of.
PETA representative Ashley Byrne of Washington, D.C. hands out anti-circus coloring books to students outside Roosevelt School in Bridgeport, Conn on Tuesday, October 12, 2009. PETA was protesting the upcoming visit to the city by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.
Ellie, the wounded PETA elephant, aka Ariela Rubin, of New York City, in a full-body elephant costume, stood at the corner of Park Avenue and Prospect Street at 3 p.m., explaining to all who would listen why children and their parents shouldn’t be happy the circus is coming to town.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is scheduled for performances Oct. 29 through Nov. 1 at the Arena at Harbor Yard.
In past years, the circus has handed out free passes to students at nearby Roosevelt School. On several occasions, elephants — the real ones — from the circus have been led over by their trainers to dine on heads of lettuce and other snacks provided by students.
That’s one of the reasons Ellie put in an appearance outside the school Tuesday, said Ashley Byrne, a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who stood alongside Ellie to hand out flyers and coloring books titled, “Animals Belong in the Jungle,” like they were going out of style.
“Oooh, what happened to you?” said Judit Melo, 10, after releasing Ellie from a body hug and looking up at the costume creature’s bandaged head.The elephant just shook her head. Byrne said that animals at the circus are jabbed backstage with spikes and beaten to make them perform difficult, sometimes painful tricks.
It’s a charge Janice Aria, the director of animal stewardship training for Ringling Bros. in Polk City, Fla., vehemently denied. “It’s so not true,” said Aria. “And it’s so bothersome to me that they’re giving this information to kids.”
Aria said elephants are so large and powerful that the concept of “making” them do anything is outlandish.
PETA, however, said an undercover investigation it conducted of Ringling Bros. found circus employees used sharp, metal-tipped bull hooks to strike elephants on the head, ears and trunks. The animals are also yanked with steel barbs, the group contends.
Aria said the video is disturbing, but also misleading. “What they did was take hours of video and edit it into three minutes,” she said. “For each instance in that clip there was a provocation. These animals are so big they have to look to us for guidance.”
She said elephants are occasionally “bopped” with a stick, or guide, as a cue. Occasionally, the tip will draw a trickle of blood. Nothing like the wound depicted on Ellie, she said.
“We all know they hit the animals” said Barbara Day, of Storrs, who came to the local demonstration in support of PETA. “They’re kind of making kids complicit. These kids don’t know. If they knew the circus was hitting animals, maybe they wouldn’t go.”
“That’s not good,” said Kim Brown, who was picking up her son Octavio, 5, at Roosevelt as she looked at Ellie’s head wound.
“That’s mean,” added Glennisha Pettway, 14, a Roosevelt eighth-grader, making a face.
Surrounded by television cameras and a half-dozen police officers, Ellie was tackled by several bear-hugging students as they left school. Bryne invited parents to check out PETA’s Web site and consider skipping the circus.
Christopher Torres, who was at the school to pick up his little sister, Shakira, 9, said he heard the lions are mistreated, too. He said he is inclined to go to a circus that doesn’t use animals.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t elephants, but clowns, who were the focus of a visit Tuesday morning by several first-, second- and third-grade classes to the Barnum Museum. The Ringling “clown ambassadors” were there to, in the words of a circus press release, “augment this regular educational program for children with circus gags.”
Stygles’ class got to dress in clown costumes and wear rubber noses.
Jessica Mugartegui’s bilingual first-grade class took a walk around Bill Brinley’s miniature big-top circus display on the museum’s third floor.
“Is that a real elephant?” one student asked pointing to the 5-inch miniature that was part of the exhibit.
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