ELEPHANTS IN THE CIRCUS

Elephants in the Circus

When I first heard that the Feld Organization was going to stop having elephants in their Ringling Circus, I thought, yeah, that’ll be the day. Same thought when I heard they were also doing way with big cats and tamers. After all that circus existed for years only because of their famous tamer, Gunther-Gebel-Williams,a man respected in the trade and one of the Ringling employees not involved in the animal abuse scandal that ended with Feld buying the circus. But I was wrong.

Prior to the nation wide elimination of animals in circuses, it was often done city by city. Many cities ruled no animal act in any circus in our jurisdiction. Circuses found out that the elimination of elephants and other exotic animals, not only did not hurt ticket sales, it also eliminated many headaches, such as picketing by PETA.

Here are a few

of my experiences

with

Elephants at the Circuses

Each year the Shrine Organization rented circus, labeled it as the Shrine Circus and raised money for their Childrens Hospital. Some years they played at the hockey arena. I was usually running house lights for the shows. For several years the circus came with three elephants. I always came early and sat in a chair next to where the elephants were leg-cuffed over night. The poor animals would be standing up, shifting their weight from side to side, giving off, not a semblance of a roar but rather a moan. The straw that was scattered for their beds showed no sign of being used over night. Nor did the hay left for feed. Only when their handler took off the cuffs, did they quit moaning and shifting and they devoured their food and water. They often closed their eyes and seemed to be asleep.

Once he took off the lead halter of one of them and slapped the animal in the face with it. That time I hollered at him. I use to raise the roof if I ever saw anyone take the bridle off a horse and slap it in the horse’s face to make it back quickly out of the stall.

The trainer gave me glare but I didn’t care.

(One asset of the elephants was their dung. I would bring a pail and fill it with dung. Then put the dung in the barrel for my rose bush feed. Take the water once a week and pour it around the bushes. Boy, did they respond to that stimulant.)

The houselights were handled at the top of the ramp where the acts had to go down to the floor. There was an old roustabout that liked to stand next to me and fill my ears with jabber. They called him Doc because like Doc of the seven dwarfs, he wore glasses. The same pair year after year, always held together with gaffing tape.

An elephant was used at intermission to give rides to kids. This particular day, a big fat truck driver started down the ramp.

‘Oh! Oh!,’Doc muttered. ‘He better stay clear of that elephant. She hates…’

Too late. When he got got within reach of her trunk, she pulled him to her and bite down on his thigh. He screamed. She roared. The kids on the ride started crying.

Damn fool!’ Doc shouted as the fatso was led past us on a gurney to the waiting ambulance.

The next day, Doc asked if I had seen the report on the news that circus employee was injured when an elephant stumbled and bumped into the man’.

‘Circus PR spun that story. Didn’t want the truth to come out.

‘That lumpy SOB wants to be an elephant handler. He’s always fooling around with that elephant trying to make her do tricks. Her handler warned him to leave her alone or she might get him. He didn’t. She did. She got him good and bet he gets his ass fired from the circus.’ (He did.)

Sometime we had a circus in the Convention Hall. I was always running a spot from the catwalk. Good and unusual view of ever thing, acts and audience. Loved it when the audience had lots of kids. They would get so excited and wave the string attached to their helium filled balloons. Many of the balloons got away and floated up in the catwalks.

Mickey E was running the light board on the floor right by the walk-around path that surrounded the three rings. It was a school matinee show that day. As a ‘sick’ elephant shuffled by, it relieved it’s diarrhea, spraying both the light board and Mickey E. The kids let out a roar of laughter. Mickey let out a string of words unfit for children to hear. A host of helium balloons floated up to the catwalk. Much to the delight of Dick M, another spot operator.

Dick would always hustle as many of the balloons he could grab in a hurry. Then he would run outside the main entrance door and sell them to the kids that probably lost them in the first place. Once they were sold, Dick would hustle down the street to the Viking Bar and have his usual liquid diet.

The next show he asked me if I could think of anything that would give an elephant diarrhea.

In some venues we had to collect our money from the promoter rather than the house doing it for us and then paying us on the house payroll. Before Feld owned Ringling we go a paycheck directly from Ringling.

It was the coolest payroll check I ever received. It had cute little elephants doing various circus tricks all over it. We were told that because the check was so delightful, a goodly amount were never cashed, just kept to show family and friends. We didn’t consider the option of keeping the check uncashed. We had a passel of hungry kids to feed.

There is a saying that an elephant never forgets

and also that an elephants has great patience

as regards vengeance

This is a story from my friend Terry T

who at the age of 13

turned pro and played stand-up bass

in a circus orchestra

The orchestra was set up on the floor right where the elephants had to stand for the grand finale. There was a wise punk on trumpet a few feet from them. He got a big kick out of blowing the horn right into the ear of one of the animals. Their trainer warned him to stop but…he would blow the trumpet and laugh.

Until the show the elephant turned her rear to him as he went to blow. She let out a gush of piss that knocked him down. She sprayed a little on some of the other musicians but the main force his the wise guy. When he managed to get his breath back and to stand, he took his trumpet and ran off stage. He was never heard from by the circus again. He never even came back to collect the salary he had coming.

And this wraps up

my elephant tales

PS: Unless I run across some more I forgot about.