Fear of the Animal Planet. Jason Hribal
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the animals are shown to target only their abusers, often taking pains to avoid trampling bystanders. Animals, in other words, acting with a moral conscience.
So let us now praise infamous animals.
Consider the case of Jumbo the Elephant, the world’s most famous animal. Captured in eastern Africa in 1865, Jumbo would become the star attraction of P.T. Barnums’ Circus. Jumbo earned millions for his owners, but he was treated abysmally for most of his brief life. The giant pachyderm was confined to a small compartment with a concrete floor that damaged his feet and caused his joints to become arthritic. He was trained using unspeakably brutal methods, he was shackled in leg-chains, jabbed with a lance, beaten with ax handles, drugged and fed beer to the point of intoxication. He was endlessly shipped back-and-forth across the country on the circus’s train and made to perform two shows a day, six days a week. At the age of 24 Jumbo was finally fed up. He could tolerate it no more. On a September night in Ontario, Jumbo and his sidekick, the small elephant called Tom Thumb, broke free from their handlers and wondered away from the tent and towards the train tracks. As P.T. Barnum later told the story, Jumbo pushed his pal Thom Thumb safely off the tracks and tried to ram an oncoming train. After Jumbo died an autopsy was performed. His stomach contents revealed numerous metallic objects that he had been fed over the years, including keys, screws, bolts, pennies and nickels—his reward for entertaining hundreds of thousands of people.
Tatiana the Tiger, confined for years in a small enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo, finally reached her limit after being tormented by three teenaged boys on Christmas day 2006. She leapt the twelve-foot high wall, snatched one of the lads in her paws and eviscerated him. She stalked the zoo grounds for the next half-hour, by-passing many other visitors, until she tracked down the two other culprits and mauled them both before being gunned down by police.
There is Ken the Orangutan who pelted an intrusive TV news crew with his own shit from his enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.
Moe the Chimpanzee, an unpaid Hollywood actor who, when he wasn’t working, was locked in a tiny cage in West Covina. Moe made multiple escapes and fiercely resisted his recapture. He bit four people and punched at least one police officer. After his escape, he was sent off to a miserable confinement at a dreary place called Jungle Exotics. Moe escaped again, this time into the San Bernadino Mountains, where he’s never been heard from since.
Speaking of Hollywood, let’s toast the memory of Buddha the Orangutan (aka Clyde), who co-starred with Clint Eastwood in the movie Every Which Way But Loose. On the set, Buddha simply stopped working one day. He refused to perform his silly routines any more and his trainer repeatedly clubbed him in the head with a hard cane in front of the crew. One day near the end of filming Buddha, like that dog in Racine’s play, snatched some doughnuts from a table on the set. The ape was seized by his irate keeper, taken back his cage and beaten to death with an ax handle. Buddha’s name was not listed in the film’s credits.
Tyke the Elephant was captured in the savannahs of Zimbabwe and shipped to the United States to work in a traveling circus, where she was routinely disciplined with a sharp hook called an ankus. After 20 years of captivity and torture, Tyke reached her tipping point one day in Honolulu. During the elephant routine under the Big Top, Tyke made her break. She smashed through the railings of the ring and dashed for the exits. She chased after circus clowns and handlers, over-turned cars, busted through a gate and ran onto the streets of Honolulu. She was gunned down, while still wearing her rhinestone tiara.
Then there is the story of Tilikum the orca. When he was two, Tilikum was rudely seized from the frigid waters of the North Atlantic off the coast of Iceland. The young killer whale was shipped to Vancouver Island, where he was forced to perform tricks at an aquatic theme park called Sealand. Tilikum was also pressed into service as a stud, siring numerous calves for exploitation by his captors. Tilikum shared his small tank with two other orcas, Nootka and Haida. In February 1991, the whales’ female trainer slipped and fell into the tank. The whales wasted no time. The woman was grabbed, submerged repeatedly, and tossed back and forth between the three whales until she drowned. At the time of the killing, Haida was pregnant with a calf sired by Tilikum.
Eight years later, a 27-year-old man broke into the aquatic park, stripped off his clothes and jumped into the tank with Tilikum. The orca seized the man, bit him sharply and flung him around. He was found floating dead in the pool the next morning. The authorities claimed the man died of hypothermia.
In 2010, Tilikum was a star attraction at Sea World in Orlando. During an event called “Dining With Shamu,” Tilikum snatched his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, and dragged her into the pool, where, in front of horrified patrons, he pinned her to the bottom until she drowned to death. The whale had delivered his third urgent message.
Tilikum is the Nat Turner of the captives of Sea World. He has struck courageous blows against the enslavement of wild creatures. Now it is up to us to act on his thrust for liberation and build a global movement to smash forever these aquatic gulags from the face of the Earth.
— Oregon City.
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Prologue: A Message From Tatiana
It was on December 26, 2007, when people around the world would first hear about the shocking attack that had occurred at the San Francisco Zoo. One person had been killed and two others critically injured. Blood was splattered everywhere. The police had gunned down the perpetrator. It was, according to all reports, a scene of mass chaos. For not only had a murderous assault taken place on Christmas day, but the killer was not even human.
Tatiana was a four-and-a-half year