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Thursday, March 28, 2024

My thoughts

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I went many times as a child to the Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Brothers circuses with my father. Zoos were also a favorite. These were treasured times together. I was drawn to animals, was fascinated by the horse acts, and grew up to own, ride and show horses, but I loved the exotic animals the best. I dreamt of working with them when I became an adult.

But as the years passed, I often felt sorry for the animals caged in tight quarters or chained. The last circus I attended was here in Wilmington; we went as a group from the office about 10 years ago. Seeing an elephant chained out by Carolina Beach Road, I stopped and took the scene in. The look the elephant gave me was one of misery. Same with the last big zoo I visited, where I had an eye-to-eye encounter with an orangutan. These animals were more cognizant, smarter than I had thought. And miserable. I never got over it.

Swimming with dolphins was high on my bucket list. Several times encountering them in the wild, I quickly eased overboard to get closer. Trips to Marineland on North Florida’s east coast several years ago with first my sister, then my grandchildren, were exciting, but I can still see in my head the dolphins swimming round and round in small enclosures. One was born on the same day and year as me, and I contemplated her lifetime of captivity. Being so close, feeding them was a thrill for the kids and me. We came away with $100 in pictures I purchased of us, plus a Christmas ornament “hand” painted by a dolphin named Sophie.

A trip to Sea World was also on my bucket list, but discarded. The “Free Willie” movie in the 1990s changed that.

The information contained in the 2013 movie “Blackfish” repulsed me. With horror I read and watched video online of the 12,000-pound orca, Tilikum, dragging his veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau by her ponytail into the water, to drown and tear her limb from limb. I was stupefied to learn this was the third time Sea World’s No. 1 breeding male whale had been involved in a trainer death and Sea World blamed the trainer. Another trainer, Alexis Martinez, had also been dismembered in Spain by an orca just two months prior. Angry, stressed-out killer whales fight back. I watched all the footage out there, the deaths and even the hunt that captured Tillicum off the West Coast as a calf, separating him from his mother and social unit. It is haunting.

Last Christmas I drove to central Florida with a carload of elephant aficionados — my sister, granddaughter and great niece — to a privately run elephant rescue and retirement ranch. There in a family farm-like setting, we squealed with amazement as we got up close and personal with elephants; feeding them, watching one paint a canvas with a brush in its trunk, even sitting atop another of these lovely, obliging pachyderms. This was a memory of a lifetime.

A week later, my grandson and granddaughter and I donned rain gear and mud boots to excitedly slog in the rain through a tiger and other big cat rescue center in north Florida. In preparation the previous night we had watched the making of “Life of Pi” with a male Bengal tiger nicknamed Richard Parker. This ranch housing a lot of Richard Parkers, plus African lions, leopards and other big cats is run on a tight budget. Restrictions and distance visitors were kept from the animals were pretty lax. We and the others in our small group got closer to some of the tigers than I now believe was prudent. They were most impressive, but smart and very wild, even after a lifetime or having been bred in captivity. It was clear these Richard Parkers would have eaten my grandson in a nanosecond if they could have gotten to him through the chain link.

Afterward I digested everything I could on why Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy, whose thrilling tiger act I had seen in Las Vegas, was mauled almost to death by a tiger he had hand raised.

For as long as I can remember, I have read every story on animal owner/trainer injured, killed by ____, you fill the animal in the blank.

Conclusion: wild means wild. Wild belongs in the wild. Not in cages. Not in circuses.

The practice of forcibly separating wild animals from their families and compelling them to perform tricks for the monetary gain of their owners is grievous. The captivity is unnatural and cannot help but marginalize the life of the animal. No wonder some strike out in anger.

The annual Cape Fear Fair and Expo is taking place out at the airport. One of this year’s attractions is a traveling show called Elephant Encounter. The organization’s website states it will perform one to three shows per day, with “the elephants on display all day.”

I was forwarded an email that read, “This traveling circus has a really bad reputation for exploiting and mistreating its animals.” It is a snap to find an Animal Rights Foundation of Florida video of owner William Morris using a bull hook on what may be the oldest elephant preforming in America, Cora, who is 50. I don’t care for some of the animal rights movement people’s tactics, but I do agree it is time for New Hanover County to follow Asheville, where the municipal venue that hosts circuses can no longer book any promoters “who have wild or exotic performing animals.”

The captivity and exploitation of wild and exotic animals for entertainment should be banned in Wilmington and New Hanover County as well.

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