July 29th, 2008. Middlefield, OH. 17 miles. Grass. Warm
First day of a two day stand in Ohio’s Amish country. The Amish we’ve discovered don’t ride camels and elephants.
ADDENDUM: I feel the need to comment on the ridiculous “Kelly Miller Circus Animal Abuse” video now on YouTube. Not a single word of what this “reporter” claims to have seen during our setup in Greenville, PA is true. Not a word. Most of his misstatements are easily refuted by simple facts. The reporter claims that animals are transported in unventilated trailers. His own video clearly shows the many windows in the animal transports. He claims that the ride ponies stood for horse in their own feces. His video shows me moving a pony that was tied to the side of a truck for less than twenty minutes while a picket line was setup in a grassy field. He refers to our lot boss as “slave labor.” He calls Armando Loyal, the elephant manager a “smelly circus worker” In point of fact he threaten to “call immigration” after having worlds with Armando. Then when Armando noted that he was born in Oklahoma he threatened violence. He states that all of our workers are “illegal aliens.” He says that INS confirmed that. Would INS knowing let us employ illegals? All of our guest workers have H-2B visas. He claims that an observer from the Cleveland Zoo was on hand. The young man with the zoo patches on his shirt was mentally challenged. He was a fan of zoos and circuses and attended the show with his mother. He wasn’t employed by the zoo, he bought the patches in their gift shop. As it happens we do have a woman on the show who did work at Cleveland Zoo once upon a time, but now she’s working on her PHD. He implies that I may have shoved him. It never happened. And for all of his claims of animal and human abuse, he shows nothing even remotely abusive.
