As someone who grew up with elephants in circuses, both as a spectator and a behind the scenes up close to elephants, I think it’s an American tragedy that Ringling Brothers has taken the elephants off of the circuit. I think it’s a tragedy because people who ordinarily wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to see elephants will no longer have that opportunity to see them. One could argue that the animals are shuffled from place to place, they’re kept under mediocre conditions in between, that they’re overworked or whatever the right words are. But sometimes you have to do kind of a value judgment about what’s the greater good from using these animals as the ambassadors of their own kind. I understand for the Feld company who made that decision, that it was a business decision. Part of it was probably directly related to pressure from humane organizations to stop mistreatment of animals, to give them a better quality of life. And I think part of it was, looking at today’s audiences and today’s interest in circus in general, and the necessity to do some cost cutting in order to keep profit margins up. But I think it’s an absolute tragedy that future generations I mean including my great grandkids, will never have the opportunity to go to the greatest show on earth and to see elephants up close, as we talked earlier, to sense them, to feel them move, to smell them, to literally taste their presence in the air.
