Sunday, June 3, 2012

Unpleasant Circus History--Sobering To Realize That Not Much Changed From 1946 to 1971......



Lion from King Brothers Circus gets sent to the Florida Lion Country Safari  1971   Note the wheels on the "cage".   From a historical point of view, I am very hard to convince that rag bag junk show's such as King Bros. and many, many others didn't do the most damage and harm to the current perspective of "circus" that the public has in their mind.  Biggest improvement, it seems to me in  was to jam the animals into smaller cages so that they could be cheaply hauled in a semi trailer.   I used similar cages, often with two animals in each cage until 1992 when Ringling Bros. built their first "beast wagon", and only used the transport cages to shift the animals into the building for the performance and back out to the stable and the "beast wagons."   When asked in 1987, by a reporter "do you think your cages are too small?"  I replied,  "they are not my cages, they belong to the circus."   Boy, did I get a ration of shit from the producer for that factual statement.   But reality is, the Trainer took the heat for the conditions, not the producer.  The Trainer had no choice or voice in conditions, regardless of whether he approved or disapproved.  The producer need's to be held accountable in almost all case's.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

King Bros made the headlines several times in the 70's for the condition of the cages in the side show/menagerie, which were smaller than this one. The jaguar's cage was literally inches wider than it's body - it had to almost do a flip to turn around.

Wade G. Burck said...

Anonymous,
I appreciate your insight, and posted it through because what you stated was the truth and verifiable, and not hearsay or slander.
But I have to ask, what is it you anonymous folks are so afraid of, that you don't want folks to know who is stating an opinion or fact. I don't know if you all have been living in a cave for the last 250 years and didn't realize it, but we kicked the Queen's ass back across the wet bit, and we are now living in the United States of America, the land of the free and the brave where we can express our thoughts and opinions without fear of reprisal, censorship, punishment or death. Freedom provided to us gratefully, by the United States military, the greatest in the world. So man up, and feel free to express yourself without looking over your shoulder, and don't disrespect the sacrifice of our men and women of the Armed Forces, by hiding under anonymous anymore. Please.

Wade

None said...

Ummm....maybe because we use other profile accounts like Yahoo, and your blog isn't worth the effort of remembering another fucking password.

Wade G. Burck said...

Anonymous,
I am guessing it sucks so bad, you have to make multiple return visits just to reassure your self of that fact. Again, I post you as an example of the sadness of an activist, worthy of the worlds pity. Not that it is any of my business, but were you raped or beaten as a child. I am sorry for you, but it was not the world's fault.

Wade