Jumbo’s retirement
Many conservationists feel there is something viscerally wrong with animal circuses. Why do they call all their elephants ‘Jumbo’ for instance? On the other hand people also allege that parliament is like a circus - with question time akin to a public viewing of feeding time. There are certainly the occasional politicians a bit like old Jumbo here who has been performing in such an institutionalized manner that she’s not sure what to do any more out in the rest of the world.
So, it is nice to see that Jumbo has found a new home to go to even if it is another zoo to replace her recently closed down one. It’s an alternative parliament to perform in - a sort of House of Lords for elephants. Animal welfare is a funny sort of thing. As the Sunday Star Times notes:
Which left Ratcliffe [Jumbo’s owner] with a dilemma. As his longtime critic, SPCA chief executive Robyn Kippenberger, put it: “There isn’t an old people’s home for elephants in New Zealand, and you can’t just let them off down the Southern Motorway.” (The organisation, which opposes animals working in circuses, says Ratcliffe now owes Jumbo a comfortable retirement.) Jumbo was a serious undertaking; she eats five bales of hay and at least $100 of vegetables a day.
Jumbo’s apparent yearnings to remain in the circus rather than slip into comfortable retirement somehow make an easier animal welfare discussion point for us lay critics than the millions of broiler chickens whose [admittedly beady] eyes we never need look into.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
yep,
much easier to think about Jumbo, than anything else in the way of current animal welfare issues… like this one:
http://indymedia.org.nz/feature/display/71814/index.php
warning: icky photo’s and even a video link.
Happy Mother’s Day to other readers….
May 12th, 2008 at 9:45 am
What a great intro for some circus comparisons…to liken the farce we call elections to a circus, is in my mind a very fitting one, with Mr Key’s latest installement/speech in Canterbury… I have only mistrust for these holow man, I want Kiwi’s, not some Multinationals from overseas desks deciding over my countries future! The globalisation experiment is back firing, with oil prices plunging most economies into recession or even depression. How will Mr Key prevent companies to go off shore to seek out cheap labour, has he any interest in that in the first place? Does he see any urgency in stoping the sale of strategic assets? Is he going to conduct business from his home in Hawaii? To be closer to his masters in the US? I fear he is already contracted to act in certain ways to keep the foreign investors in a good ‘mood’.
I would like to see him interviewed by Nicky Hager on the politics of deceptions and not one of those clowns on friendly, foreign investors pay roles! How I wish he would be authentic…The worst part is that Helengrad is not an alternative…there is no alternative?!