Sunday, May 27, 2012

Circus Hall of Fame 1971--Popsicle / Cleopatra / Champagne / Dottie, SB 22 ~1964



Popsicle / Cleopatra / Champagne / Dottie, SB 22
~1964 - Birth, India
~06/1965 - Chateau Theatrical Animals (New York World's Fair)
~1969 - Beardsley Zoo, Connecticut
05/24/1977 - Jurgen Schulz
05/19/1978 - Chehaw Wild Animal Park, Georgia
05/03/1985 - Buckles Woodcock
??? - Death

Radar,
     Mr. Phelps, your next assignment, should you choose to accept, is to compile a list of known "rogue, bad, killer,bastard" elephants and how many people handled them, and most importantly "who" handled them on their road to destruction.  Post/publish the "facts" if you have the stones and fortitude of a historian.  Popsicle / Cleopatra / Champagne / Dottie was suggested as a starting point.   I have never felt an animal listed as simply "dead" or "lost to followup" has been honorably studied.  The fact that Popsicle / Cleopatra / Champagne / Dottie's most extensive bio came out of TES is pretty embarrassing.   Maybe now is a good time to stop revering bandits, and revering others more deserving.  Maybe now is the time to show the world we are making it right, instead of kicking it down the road, in an effort to be with it and for it.  This message will self destruct in 5 seconds................ 

2 comments:

Ryan Easley said...

Are you kidding me??? I cannot hardly figured out where an elephant came from, went and died. You want me to name handlers too??

In the meantime while I pick my jaw up off the floor, Dan has a good beginning.

"The list is a new function, and its incomplete. Please tell me about elephants missing!
146 captive elephants that killed human keepers and trainers, or visitors to zoos, circuses and camps."
http://www.elephant.se/elephant_mankillers.php

Wade G. Burck said...

Radar,
Serious as a heart attack. If someone is to be revered as the "boss historian" as you did for a certain elephant trainer, they have to stop trying to write history as they see fit, instead of letting the chips fall as they may.

Roger Smith said...

RYAN: You were right to ask Buckles for name-change history. I was at Jungleland it's last 5 years, and we did have a "Taffy". Our funeral, under the auspices of the federal court-ordered auction, was conducted over October 8-9,1969. I didn't keep up with where all our atock went. After seeing the cats I cared for and worked sold off, I couldn't. I went back to the Beatty show for 1980, and if Taffy had a name change, you couldn't prove it by me. In regard to Freida, Freddie Logan put it very succinctly: "Freida will kill you." I stand to be corrected, by I believe it was Freida who killed a townie woman who approached her one dark morning when there was no watchman.

27 May, 2012 19:13

Here was my response which I guess was "unseemly" as it was sent to the incinerator:

Roger,
I was always told that Pete killed the "townie women", and Frieda, being less valuable was blamed in case there were repercussions and the culprit was ordered destroyed or relocated.
Frieda was one of 4 protected contact/hands off elephants at Hawthorn(USDA referred to them as "the troubled elephants in back.") Three I could understand, but Frieda was a mystery to me. When asked why she was pc, I was told that after the guy who could handle her left, given the "Beatty incident" it was thought wise to put her in pc. Over a short period of time I became comfortable going in to the enclosure with Frieda as well as Nic eventually. I never had a moment's problem with Frieda and because of the report that had been established, I was able to water Nic, by going into the crush with Freida to reach him during the disastrous move to TES. It was the only way. Billy was in the main pen, Sue was down in the holding pen which left Nic isolated in the back pen with only the crush, where Frieda was as a passage way to him. Frieda had a tough, hard life and she was a sad, emotionless animal, but I never noted a mean bone in her body. She was very thin after a number of years of being "bullied" out of her grain by Billie, but after I started splitting her, Sue and Billie up at grain time and feeding her hay in isolation for two hours in the crush before putting them together for the night she gained over 1240 lbs the first year.

Wade Burck

I have told my understanding of the Frieda/Pete saga as I was told three times on the "history channel" and no one to date has corrected it. Maybe that's why it was finally censored. Do not, I mean do not, let "boss historians" write history as they see fit. Leave the jackpots out in the cold where they belong.

Wade