Imagine if you had to walk to work every day while suffering from a debilitating medical condition that caused your joints to ache and your feet to throb. At work, you'd be kept on your feet constantly and forced to perform physical labor for long shifts. You'd be given no chance to recuperate (much less retire), and when you slowed down or balked, your boss would hit you with something resembling a fireplace poker or would stick the pointy end of the instrument under your chin and drag you around. When you weren't working, you would live in chains and wouldn't be given any medication for pain.
That's pretty much what life is like for Karen, Nicole, and Sara—three elephants who are shunted from town to town by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Recently, independent exotic-animal veterinarians and a retired elephant manager, with nearly 100 years of combined experience, observed the elephants while the circus was in Charlotte. According to their official reports, all three elephants are suffering from lameness—a painful condition that can be made worse by the awkward contortions required to perform circus tricks and by a meager "life" on the road. Nicole and Karen also suffer from arthritis, and Sara, who is only 10 years old, is well on her way to developing the disease. Ringling has ignored all recommendations that Nicole be excluded from performing certain routines, and now she is in such poor physical condition that experts insist that keeping her on the road constitutes "unnecessary cruelty."
Elephants are meant to move about, roaming for miles over grass and soft terrain and engaging in activities that come naturally to them. These hurting girls are not meant to stand on urine- and feces-covered cement for hours on end or to be beaten and forced by Ringling to perform harmful, unnatural tricks that strain their aching muscles and joints.
Please take a minute of your time to help spare Karen, Nicole, and Sara from additional suffering by politely urging Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack to stop folding to pressure from Ringling and to immediately seize these ailing elephants before it's too late—foot disorders and arthritis are the leading reasons for euthanasia in captive elephants.
