The Circus is in town

Hey everyone, the circus is in town!

Maybe I'll give it a miss. In case you've missed it, I live in Northern Norway. Circus Merano are Norway's touring circus. These are just a couple of creative commons pictures I found but if you want to look at Merano's website www.merano.no, you can find birds, dogs and goats as well as the elephant and horse, performing for the happy children.

I mention the fact that I live in Northern Norway for a good reason and that is because it is a long long way from anywhere else, including southern Norway. I have seen these circus trucks traveling and the conditions look none too comfortable. When we needed a car two years ago, Matthew drove to Trondheim, the next major city south from us to get a better deal. It took him 11 hours to drive it and that's only a little way down! I cannot think what these animals go through during these journeys. Yet I guess that's nothing compared to how they were trained to perform such wonderful crowd pleasing tricks.

I have always had a huge problem with circuses that exploit animals. Why can't a circus build a reputation on the clever things 'people' are capable of? Yet if people decided to boycott circuses that use animals, these companies would be forced to make a change. Yet the audiences still come. Those who would 'rather not think about it' keep this inhumane activity going and prolong the suffering of animals such as these. For those who say these animals are happy, they are not. Both you and I and everyone else knows it.

As I passed the poster for the circus the other day I was playing a CD in the car. It is Heidi's favourite CD and used to be one of my old albums entitled 'The Runaway Train'. Just as we passed the poster, 'Nellie the Elephant' came on the stereo and I sang it all the way through to Heidi's amusement. We listened to it 3 times with Heidi joining in as she learned the words.

Please let you children grow up knowing that animals deserve better.