Cruel Entertainment

If I live to be 100, I will never understand some humans’ penchant for training wild animals to perform. It is an outright abnormality. I’m sure the creator didn’t intend bears to dance, elephants to kneel and bow or lions to leap through fire hoops. It is a crime to mutilate them, a desecration of nature’s handiwork; any trainer practicing such cruelty is more in need of discipline and decent behavior than any beast.

It is sad if a trainer or a spectator is killed, which is proof of the foolhardy entertainment it is. To what degree may a kind trainer be truly kind? Only by putting one’s self in the animal’s place can one understand the frustration of a powerful beast being tethered, big agile cats caged. How long should one survive such abnormal restraints? Eventually there has to be a breaking point.

With endless entertainment available--television, theater, concerts, athletics, radio, movies, parks and picnics--surely we can forgo seeing creatures of the wild reduced to the whim of so-called entertainment.

Instead, grant these wild beasts their God-given right and dignity to live as nature intended. Protect them rather than exploit them. Are we or are we not civilized enough to maintain a hands-off policy and outlaw acquiring wild animals as pets, and prohibit them from being trained to perform?

We are in dire need of a bit of humility for the awesome beauty of nature.

MYRTLE L. RING

Laguna Hills