My Animal Rights Blog

Wrote letter to editor LAbeat

   Thu, July 13, 2006 - 3:48 PM
I read your article , " That's entertainment" , and it was very sad news to me. A very powerful article speaking out for one beautiful elephant who had to suffer very much in a zoo kept alive with all these antibiotics and died splayed out. I remember writing myself months ago to send Gita away to a sanctuary.

I think the article made the point clear that elephants were not meant to be in a cage because of the toxins built up when there is no blood flow to the legs.

Also they are social herd animals and travel miles each day in the wild.

We just can't keep elephants like we keep dogs and cats.

Actually anyone's life is better outside a cage...

They are fed who knows what and given poisons they never had before called medicines made for and created by people, who really don't know anything about anything about elepahnts.

I felt very moved and am thanking the author, Perry Crowe!



3 Comments

add a comment
Thu, July 13, 2006 - 5:55 PM
I couldn't agree more
Elephants are social creatures with a sense of "family" and "community" that we could learn something from. In nature, they travel hundreds and hundreds of miles during their migrations. They do not belong in zoos, circuses or elephant ranches where people ride them (more common in other countries like Thailand than here in the US). They need more room and socialization than humans can possibly provide them. And the idea that we're "saving a species whose environment is being decimated" is nonsense. People keep elephants for the same reason slave-owners kept slaves. They have a profit motive.

I used to run an animal hospital. One day we got a call from some local charity asking us to send a disadvantaged child to the circus. I politely but in detail helped them understand why this was completely out of the question and the exact opposite of our mission to help and heal animals. By the end of the call, I had the caller thinking twice about circuses altogether. I wish more people were as receptive to that message.
Thu, July 13, 2006 - 7:48 PM
wow you are my heroine. I hope we can be friends
Tue, August 15, 2006 - 7:21 PM
you're welcome
Thanks for reading.