Kenny's last act

The 'Greatest Show on Earth' turns
into a nightmare for one baby elephant

by David Andrew Stoler

Amy LeWinter never wanted to run away and join the circus. "I never thought about it, until it fell into my lap," says LeWinter, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus's marketing and sales manager.

Now, though, she wouldn't want to be anywhere else. "There aren't many places like this one," she says, waving her arms at the clowns and acrobats getting ready for the 7 p.m. Providence Civic Center show on Friday, May 1. "We make people happy; the whole family can come to us and have a good time." Beaming now, she says, "That's what we're in business for."

But when LeWinter finds out that yet another animal-rights group is protesting the alleged abuse of animals by Ringling Bros. (over the course of its 10-and-a-half-month season, Ringling Bros. says it sees protests at up to 80 percent of its tour stops), she is suddenly all A-Team. Her smile is gone, replaced by a down-to-business sergeant in yet another battle. She barks a few short commands into her walkie-talkie and gets moving toward the protest site.

Outside the Civic Center, the classic tête-à-tête is just getting started: the Rhode Island Animal Rights Coalition (RIARC) has begun picketing, holding up large signs that say, among other things, "An Animal's Worst Nightmare." As part of a national publicity campaign organized by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and endorsed by celebrities such as Kim Basinger and Gérard Dépardieu, RIARC is protesting what it considers to be the abusive manner in which Ringling Bros. keeps and handles its animals.

According to PETA and RIARC, last January Ringling Bros. "forced Kenny, an endangered Asian baby elephant, to perform three shows even though [Kenny] was sick." The end result, they say, was the animal's cruel -- and avoidable -- death.

From 1990 to July 1997, the circus was cited by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for 139 non-compliances of the Animal Welfare Act, says PETA -- a number so alarming that the animal-rights group, at circuses.com, has dedicated plenty of meg to documenting alleged elephant abuse by Ringling Bros. They also have taken out huge ads in local newspapers (including one in the April 24 issue of the Providence Phoenix) to coincide with Ringling Bros. tour stops -- ads that essentially urge people to stay away from animal circuses on the basis that they are veritable torture houses for the elephants.

Circus officials, of course, have their own spin on RIARC's charges, the underlying ones being that RIARC has hypocritical philosophical problems with any people-to-animal contact, that RIARC is out of touch with the reality of the love and care with which Ringling Bros. handles its animals, and that, specifically, RIARC has basically no idea of what it speaks.

LeWinter says that Ringling Bros. "has never been cited by any regulatory agency." As for the dead baby elephant, she responds, "I don't believe that was Ringling Bros."

But PETA and RIARC disagree, and show a USDA report that states that twice on January 24, 1998 Ringling Bros. "failed to handle Kenny as expeditiously and carefully as possible in a manner that did not cause . . . stress and unnecessary discomfort." The report goes on to say that "after determining that the elephant was ill and needed to be examined by a veterinarian, [Ringling Bros.] made the elephant perform before [said examination]."

In all fairness, PR is not LeWinter's job. And she eventually directs me to David Kiser, Ringling Bros.' official point man for the press. Kiser has been working for Ringling Bros. for some 17 years now, prepped for PR during the first 13 as, yes, a clown. He obviously knows his stuff a bit better than LeWinter and admits to the citations. Kiser is quick to point out, though, that a citation isn't such a serious thing.

"A citation is something where an inspector comes, sees something wrong, and gives us a `fix-it' ticket, where we have 24 hours to fix whatever the problem was," he says.

Furthermore, the citations all pertained to "housekeeping matters, having nothing to do with animal treatment," says Kaiser. "One time [the inspectors] found straw in the water, for example, so they said, `You have to sweep this up.' Things like that."

Harmless stuff, is the implication. And, indeed, according to Kaiser, Ringling Bros. cares for its animals better than most people do their pets. "We're with them 24 hours a day, to make sure that all their needs are met. We protect our animals. We understand that they are our best and biggest resource and that they are living, breathing beings. Now, anyone who saw our backstage area, how we keep and care for our pets, I guarantee you they would have no problem with us."

"Great," I ask, my photographer tagging along beside me, "so we can go back and take a look?"

"The truth is," says Kaiser, "no." And now he looks uncomfortable; his face is pained. Awkward pause in the conversation -- and, yet, no explanation given.

I weasel, point out the clear and fortuitous opportunity to back up his claims against "those pain-in-the-ass PETA folk." He bites, and I'm under the belly of the Civic Center, fulfilling the absolute childhood fantasy, making my way through clowns practicing their juggling, midgets smoking cigarettes, an eight-footer named Khan, plus tons of lithe women in glossy tights (the presence of which recalls yet another fantasy, a bit different in nature and, I admit, from perhaps a bit older age than mere childhood) toward the backstage animal area.

Meanwhile, outside Charleston couple Jeannine and George Tucker say that the circus would be fine and dandy entertainment if it would just leave the darned animals alone. On behalf of RIARC, Jeannine says, "These animals should be left to their natural habitat -- elephants just should not be in Providence. The climate isn't right, they're cold, and they get sick and then are forced to work. If the kids going into this circus knew that Kenny died and how horribly [Ringling Bros.] treats the animals, I don't think they would want to see it. Children are a lot more sensitive [than adults]."

It's true that, backstage, the animals' cages are kept outside in the cool spring air. Clearly not Saharan. Plus, the cages -- not the grandest homes for our "biggest resource." The tigers sit hunched in what can only be described as cells, maybe four-by-four-by-eight. Although in front of us now passes a train of the baby elephants, linked trunk-to-tail, about as tall as my chest, and cute as buttons. As far as I can tell, they are happy enough. Smiling, even.

But then I see their guide and what he's guiding them with -- an iron fire-poker-type thing with a sharp point and a hook near its end. He's gentle enough with it, certainly, but it's not a pretty . . . implement.

When I ask Kiser about the dead baby elephant, he looks mournful and says, "Kenny . . . yes. This was a tragic thing for us. He was one of nine elephants born to us at our Elephant Conservation Center in Florida, and his death was really tough on us. He had an intestinal infection whereby the time you find out about it, it's already too late -- that's the nature of that infection."

But RIARC contends that every aspect of Kenny's death was caused by the circus. "These infections only take place in captivity," says Jeannine Tucker. "The elephants don't get them in the wild." As for finding out about the disease too late, the whole point of the USDA complaint is that Ringling Bros., which shares one veterinarian between its two traveling shows (the other show being in Hawaii right now), didn't get Kenny to a vet fast enough.

In response to such criticism, Kaiser says that RIARC and PETA "are not what most of their members believe [them] to be. PETA is against all human-to-animal contact, a complete segregation between people and animals, whereas I'd bet most actual members live side-by-side with pets they care about, like we care about our animals. We take incredibly good care of our animals, and that's all that most PETA members would want."

But RIARC doesn't buy the implied analogy. "When you train a dog, you give him a treat. You don't slam him with a bullhook," says Melanie McCor-mack, another RIARC member. "Besides, dogs have been domesticated for a thousand years -- this is just an abuse issue."

But what RIARC has less of a grasp on is that the animals do, in fact, benefit from human contact. They are fed consistently, for example, and I don't doubt that there is great affection between trainer and animal. The adult elephants, when I saw them, where positively loving their pre-show scrub-down. They were all standing in a ring under a big tent, being brushed and primped for the show. Not so bad. Plus, because the elephants are gainfully employed, they don't need to worry about, say, poachers or their day-to-day survival.

What's more, George Tucker, for one, has gone to work when he was sick on more than one occasion -- even when he didn't know exactly what was wrong with him. Just like Kenny. "I got two kids to feed," he says.

But the truth is, even though Kenny didn't have a say in whether he worked or not, a lot of us don't either. That may seem like a trivial point, but really, it's the driving force between the RIARC-v.-Ringling Bros. conflict. The elephants work for Ringling.

And it stands to reason that Ringling Bros., being the most nationally known and, therefore, the most obvious target for protesters, would keep its nose fairly clean when it comes to animal treatment. They want to be too well-respected and have too much to lose. This is not to say that mild abuse doesn't take place, abuse that clearly should not occur, but the things to really worry about are the cheapies, the traveling zoos that come to the mall once a year and what not.

At the end of the day, the show, of course, goes on. The Civic Center is packed with parents and children, all open-mouthed with excitement and having a good time. The clowns are clown-like, and one of the glittered women folds herself up into a tiny box. Animals, elephants, people do tricks. Circus stuff occurs.

Outside, the debate continues under a light Friday-night rain, each side lobbing rhetoric that isn't quite true, or that approximates truth. The protest's goal of informing kids and parents just what it is that they might be paying for is important, if only because it keeps Ringling Bros. on its toes, keeps it culpable.

But the problem with debates like this is that groups tend to take things to unreasonable extremes and then to find themselves at a stalemate -- RIARC's "no animals used by humans" versus Ringling's "we're basically Audubon under a tent." The rest of us, generally, come down on the sensible side -- animals should be treated right, should be cared for and not abused. Then, too, the circus rocks.

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