Barnum musical

Scheduled in April is a play title "Barnum". Barnum traces the career of P.T. Barnum, America's greatest showman. America's greatest animal abuser! Many people are not aware of what goes on 'behind the big tent'. The animals are babies stolen from their mothers. The babies are tortured until their spirits are broken and forced to do unnatural stances under the fear of pain. This is what the rest of their lives are like.

Over the centuries, circus trainers have come up with ways to get wild animals to comply. Not very nice things. Things like bull hooks, whips, metal pipes and kicks to the head. Things like systematic and total breakage of spirit. Of course, trainers do so only because they know the results are well worth the entertainment it provides to you and your children. They've been using these same methods — all except the more recent stun gun. So, what is done to these innocent, sentient beings is entertainment? Shame on anyone who attends animal performances, this keeps the abuse going. It makes you part of the abuse.

You don't need to just take my word for it. Doing an online search of circus animal abuse will bring up hundreds of articles, pictures, videos, newscasts of the daily abuse the animals suffer. The pictures and videos are hard to see. But, there is the proof for any naysayers.

Judy Collins