Steve, one big cage or two small ones? Note the warehouse processing rabbit skins. I'll bet the meat plentiful and the bill was reasonable the day they played this lot. LOL
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Fitzgerald Bros. Circus & Menagerie
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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5 comments:
When you talk about American cat cages in air conditioning or heated building vs beast wagons with straw, you're talking about shows playing in arenas, and assume that all cage acts had indoor winter housing. Also, even in building shows, the cats are often outside and only brought in before the show. Tent shows don't have heating or air conditioning, and many independant acts never had heated indoor housing for the off season. When European shows are playing in buildings, the wagons are often parked inside the building as well, so there's not that much difference. Although, I will concede that winters in Florida are a lot milder than Europe. I think you're doing a little wishful thinking over there Wade, because I've working in America and Europe and have seen every concievable way of keeping big cats on circuses.
Anonymous,
Why don't you have a name then, if you have done it all, or in the "trenches" as our esteemed John Milton would say. If the caged animals(cat act) are not in the building in the wintertime, they are in heated tents, always without fail. The cages are bedded with straw for the trip, loaded in the truck, offloaded and put into the aforementioned heated tent or building.
So how is it better for them to be out in the weather, with a cage bigger by 6 inches at most. I am not assuming anything about cage acts having winter housing. I have been around a bit also. I am talking about the false thought that 6 inches of beast wagon speak to better husbandry. If a building can put up a heated tent, it should be much easier for a "canvas" building to do the same. Give us the names of all European show's that play in buildings in the winter time, and tell us how many of those put the beast wagons inside, and how many of them leave them outside bedded with straw.
I was taking about winter's up north where every "winter date" is at starting the end of November, and winter's during "festival season." I was only in Florida for a few years with Ringling. You friend, it seems have a fistful of wishes, not I.
Wade
Addendum to Anonymous,
I forgot to ask, how are rehearsals going over there? What's it going to be, lions or tigers? My best to your father.
Wade
Did you really have to go all the way back to 1894 to try to shoot me down? LOL!
Proves what I said though - great advances in circus animal keeping. Basic things like pneumatic tyres for more comfortable travelling, better weather protection, more space, more genuine enrichment, better diets etc, etc.
By the way - new Zealand is not part of Australia. A seperate island nation off our east coast. A bit like Cuba is to Mexico - some similarities but proudly seperate and independent.
Steve,
These weren't meant to shoot you down. I just had them, and I wasn't inferring New Zealand was the same as Australia. But that is a good point, that the closer they are, in the circus the more they tended to "copy/emulate." I could have also just gone back to to 1950 if I wanted to show the "changes" today. With the exception of an exercise cage, which was "regulated" with great alarm and consternation, the beast wagon has remained, for the most part, relatively unchanged, as has the weather in the wintertime.
Wade
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