It’s adorable seeing animals anthropomorphized on the interwebz.
Sometimes it’s even useful.
Especially if you’re issuing grim life updates:
And I get sick of seeing the peanut gallery and their buzz killery via shaming owners for the adorable media being shared: “Waaah… You must be abusing your dog if they’re sitting in that swing… or walking on two legs… or on fire…” You know the deal. You’ve seen the comments. You’ve read these annoying presumptuous posts before.
That said, I feel like there’s a monumental difference between spontaneous and harmless human-like behaviors that domesticated pets do – and wild ones. Like, say, elephants. That’s why when I see a video like this one, the beginnings of a turbulent darkness stir deep down in my anal chakra – alerting me that something’s not quite right.
(Yeah. She knows whatchyu “got in that hand”. An elephant’s ass never forgets a bullhook.)
Maybe my suspicion is due to the fact that I watched “Water For Elephants” once.
Or maybe it’s the fact that Sir Twilight and Legally Blonde weren’t confirmation enough for me, and I opted to watch a documentary about it afterward as well – confirming that it’s been and still is just as bad as the fictional Hollywood work for ages, and maybe worse. Baby elephants get ripped from their mothers early on, tied up, and terrorized into doing tricks until they become habitual and second nature. The fear association of getting a pointy hook in the tender parts of their ear or stabbed in the rear is enough to get them to sit on too-small stools, stand on their front legs, parade around in unison, and dance to music.
All shit none of them would ever do in their natural habitat.
All shit none of them would ever do without being bloodily bullied into it with a bullhook.
So it’s been said.
Now, some trainers will claim that they train their elephants using a “reward system” sans pain issuing or punishment for not doing tricks. Sites like PETA will counter that that’s not true because it’s hard to love an animal into doing painful things it wouldn’t dream of doing to carry on surviving in the world. But I dunno, because I’m not a trainer. Or an elephant (though I’ve been eating like one today).
But people who have been trainers, have documented “how it’s done” in most places.
It’s hard for me to tell if Mr. Franks was among the nice-guy types of trainers (if that’s even a thing) in the 70’s, but as most of the literature and leaked photos of gigs like Ring-a-ling seem to convey, that’s generally a bold faced lie the clowns tell to keep you laughing and clapping at creatures doing ridiculous things for your entertainment. It just seems shitty to me, either way. From riding a horse to riding an elephant (both of which I’ve done in my formative years so my parents could take pictures), it’s always seemed some strange unspoken agreement I couldn’t quite articulate – like that scene I’d see later on in life from SOA where the guards make Gemma and Clay sex eachother up in a cell. Neither participant is really down with it even though they respect eachother, but they reluctantly comply for reasons that never seem good enough retrospectively.
Seriously – reward or not – if I’m an animal, I don’t wanna spend my life with a “job”
I’m just here to enjoy life and survive it as long as I can, asshole.
So let’s let these poor fat asses back into the wild.
Or somewhere they can just do whatever the hell it is they do when we aren’t watching.
I fucking knew it.