Testimony From Former Circus Worker:

 

January 26, 2004

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Courtenay Tosti (formerly Courtenay Warren). I worked at Carson & Barnes Circus C&B) during 1993 when I was 21 years old. The following is an account of what I witnessed while working at the circus.

Many of the people working at C&B were on the run from something they had done. I was warned to be careful when I joined as 2 workers had supposedly killed their wives, and were known to brutalize women. My boss, John "JB" Brooks, cursed at me constantly and frequently hit me.

The Millers, who own the circus, had various skins and skulls of deceased performing animals, including a tiger skin and a hippo skull, decorating their homes and offices.

Owners told me that I would be sorry if I ever told what I saw. Based on what I had heard and the tone used by my superiors, I felt as if they were threatening me with physical harm. When I stood crying as they dumped the body of Nelson, a Siberian tiger, into a trash bin Gary Byrd approached me and said that if I knew what was good for me I would keep quiet.

All of the animals were stressed out much of the time, and some of them got very aggressive. Margaret, the elephant, chased a man up a pole, tried on numerous occasions to karate-kick me as she would go past, and was always in trouble. 

A member of the prop crew got too close to the tiger cage one night and a tiger grabbed the boys head with his paw and inflicted deep wounds. I saw the injured boy right after the attack, he was sitting on a chair, with his head between his knees, blood was pouring out of a couple of large holes in his head.

The owners and handlers knew how dangerous the animals were. However, that did not stop them from putting the animals near the spectators. Even certain elephants who were known to have killed people and were considered "insane" were not kept away from the public. It was very easy for the public to approach the elephants on the picket line from the rear, which startles them, and as I was in the security department I was frequently forced to make entire families leave the elephants area, where they would bring their children right up to the chained elephants to pet them, oblivious to how deadly this could be. If no one was watching closely people would often duck the useless barriers in front of the Cat Cages and approach the big cats, sometimes holding their children up for a better look.

I never saw a vet attend to any animals when they were on the road.

While having a difficult birth, a four-horned sheep was put into a hot trailer and left alone. She could be heard screaming but no one attended her, she died.

A wallaby had open, festering wounds and was not provided with vet care.

A horse, Rick, was allowed to eat moldy hay and died.

A Siberian tiger, Nelson, was ill, supposedly from pneumonia, and laid down in the chute as it was no longer able to stand. Several handlers stabbed at him with bullhooks to get him to move. He was not given vet care, and died soon thereafter. His body was picked up by a front-end loader and dumped in a trash bin. I was told that his skin would be kept.

A pygmy hippo, Katy, was not given water to lay in, and her back was cracked and bloody. I inquired about this and was told that a pygmy was not a 'water hippo', and that water only irritated her back. The hippo from the year before died at a young age.

Animals were often left out in the hot sun, the rain, and in extreme  temperatures, sometimes below freezing. I saw Goliath, a white rhinoceros, huddled against the back of his cage trying to stay warm. I saw the zebra, standing head down, shivering in the snow.

The elephants were not allowed to cover themselves with mud or water because it would mess up the performers uniforms. Their skin was very dry and cracked, and would often bleed. If  they attempted to throw water on their backs they were beaten.

The elephants were only fed hay and sweet feed, which caused them to suffer digestive problems, including diarrhea.

All of the elephant handlers went into the barn at winter quarters to blow torch the hair off the elephants, which could tear a performers uniform. They would close the doors but you could hear the elephants screaming, and smell the burning hair and skin. I later saw black marks on the elephants bodies. When I asked about it I was told it was from the blow-torching, but that it 'didn't hurt'.

It was well known that new handlers were taught to be mean and aggressive to the animals. When they were not mean enough, they were reprimanded, taken off animal duty, or fired. I witnessed one handler, Oakie Carrs son-in-law, harshly criticizing a new elephant handler for not being more aggressive with Bunny, the elephant in his charge.

I often saw camels being hit and one time I saw a handler, Reggie Lindsey, curse at a camel and whack it on its hind legs, with his bullhook.

The handlers took great pride in concocting newer and more violent torture devices. They would put nails and hooks into baseball bats. They would put larger hooks, the type used by firemen to tear open walls, into the creation of their bullhooks. Their devices put ordinary bullhooks to shame.

I observed one practice training session in the barn at the winter quarters. The trainer struck the elephants over and over, and called them filthy names. They were struck on their eyes and genital areas.

Elephants were constantly beaten every day. The handlers yanked and stabbed at them with the hook, and hit them with baseball bats. This was done because the elephants did not respond quickly enough to a command, because the elephants were doing something that annoyed the handlers, like playing with the picket line, and often for no apparent reason. 

An elephant named Mona, reputedly crippled during her training, had severe back problems but continued to travel with the circus until she fell out of the trailer twice and was mortally injured.

Alta, one of the elephants Reggie Lindsey was in charge of, turned and ran out of the tent during the show, knocking cars out of her way. She was brought back and beaten severely by Lindsey. Lindsey often beat her, and she ran like this more than once.

Becky the elephant was forced to perform when she had a painful foot infection. She walked very slowly with a limp, and was struck and yelled at to get her to move more quickly.

Despite suffering from arthritis, Minnie was forced to do the routine called the long mount where all the elephants stand propped on each others backs in a row. Each time she did it she would wince, shake her head and scream in pain.

Margaret was an elephant who was often in trouble. In order to teach her a lesson, 6 or 7 elephant handlers surrounded her and began beating her ruthlessly as she was chained front and back legs. Some of them stabbed at her legs to keep her off balance while one beat her over the head with a baseball bat until she was bloody. She fell forward and started crying, shaking, urinating and defecating. It went on for several minutes.

Kay, a matriarchal elephant well into her fifties was very sick with kidney problems. She was forced to perform even though she was very ill. She died while the circus was performing in Taylorville, Ill. She was standing and since she was chained to the picket line, her body just tilted forward. All of the other elephants became hysterical and were screaming and trying to touch her and offer assistance, but they couldn't move because they, too, were chained.

I have heard the animals agonizing cries for help go unanswered. I have heard the circus people lie to the public about how the animals are treated. I share this information in hopes that the public will understand the degree of immense pain and suffering, beatings and neglect, and illnesses and deaths that circus animals experience on a regular basis and refuse to support it.

 

Sincerely,

Courtenay Tosti


MORE

"Sad to say, using the bullhook in the rectum, vagina and on the breasts, is common, it was one of the things they did to Margaret- They did it to Opal one day and she cried( whimpered) when she peed for a couple of days. They will get a hook in from the rear between the legs and yank upwards as hard as possible, it bleeds like crazy when they do this."

"Just imagine the things I didn't see...alot goes on after dark at the circus-many of these men were sex offenders in the first place...there were rumors of men having favorite horses...and worse"

"I guess that over the years I have become 'accustomed' to the images in my head, it must be really shocking to hear about these things for the first time. The thing that made it all worse, was knowing the elephants personally. seeing their very complex personalities and unnervingly human reactions to things being done to them..and to be able to do nothing. On my first or second day with the show, we were still at winter quarters, I was without anything to do and I was just wandering around observing. The elephants were out in 'the yard', a small area behind the barn that they would put the ellys in when they needed to clear some manure out. They were put on a picket, just as they were in the barn and everywhere else they went. I noticed one elephant had a rock and was striking her chain with it. She would lay the rock down, as if to reposition it, and then pick it up and continue striking at the chain. This elephant had an extra set of chain bracelets on her front legs, and I was told later that this was Barbara, and that she wore those chains as she was a 'runner'. They told me that she once broke her chains and then removed the hinges from the barn door, laid it aside, carefully put aside all of the tools and things in the way, and then ate all the grain stores, making herself sick. She was also the one that broke loose one day several years ago, set two of her friends free, and then together they escaped to Hugo lake and were at large for several days before they actually had to call in a big game hunter to track them down! To anyone who may think that an elephant is smart in the way that an exceptional dog is smart, tales like these might sound fabricated...I didn't really believe the things I saw either, I mean, to believe it was to face the fact that an animal with a sentient mind and human emotions was being treated so horrifically...it was very disturbing. I have many more stories like these and I feel that the more widely they are told the better. I have been telling them for years, and have turned more than a few people against the circus in that time. I really am so glad that I have found this site and I definitely want anything I say to be passed around, by whatever venue. My name is Courtenay Tosti, please feel free to use my name or whatever I say on your site! Now if we could just get it onto the billboard at Times Square....."

"The Carson and Barnes Circus has it's winter quarters in the small town of Hugo, Oklahoma, a town where my grandfather was Mayor, and where I spent most of my teenage years. Hugo called itself 'circus town USA' and I went to school with several performers children, some of them performers themselves, as well as with the daughters of the owners Gary and Barbara Byrd. One of my friends in high school was an elephant rider who was the daughter of David Rawls, the owner of the Kelly-Miller circus, a smaller offshoot of C&B. So to was almost natural that at some point I would join, it was the only job left in town, anyway. When I first joined, the show was still at winter quarters, doing repairs and creating the new props for the next season. I didn't have much to do and mainly just ran around observing those first few days. I remember seeing the bullhooks hanging in the barn and asking what they were used for and the handlers just laughing. I was so excited that day when I heard they were going to be putting Kelly-Millers three elephants through their paces that day in the big barn...I climbed up in the loft to get a great Arial view. The handler walked the elephants in and I saw he had a pocketful of carrots...then he immediately screamed " alright you f*****g b*******s MOVE UP!!!! It got worse from there, he hit them constantly even though they were doing their best, and called them filthy names. I was shocked when Viola, a young African who did a cute little wave with her trunk, began crying at one point, for which she was struck over the face repeatedly. This went on for the whole 45 minutes or so that he was working them...oh, and he never gave them a single carrot. I was to soon find out that this was the daily reality for the elephants, much of it alot worse."

"The elephants at Carson and Barnes live on a steady diet of hay and sweet grain (sweet feed). Elephants need whole, green vegetation, fruits and the larger variety of foods that they would encounter foraging. Many of .C&B's elephants are bloated, with pinched faces and thin legs, they have terrible gas and they also had terrible body odor, partly from living in their own filth. The elephants drink only as much as the handlers would let them, before they got bored and I saw the elephants being forced away from the water more than once. They aren't allowed to spray water on their backs, nor do they ever get to lay in water, so they have very thick, flaky dry skin that you could hear scratching as they would go by. I watched a very sweet elly named Minnie stuffing mud into some cracks in her skin one day, when it had rained so much that there water standing in the tent. She was looking around as if afraid to be caught, and the only reason she got a chance to do it in the first place was because the muddy conditions made things chaos and her handler was preoccupied. Sometimes the cracks would ooze blood, and there would be flies in the sores, and the handlers would use the wounds as a spot to inflict pain, making the wound worse. It's no wonder that many performing elephants have numerous scars and warts, which grow up around wounds that aren't being allowed to heal. Trust me you guys, Frisco is nothing special as far as how mean a trainer can be. They are ALL just like him, it's hard to believe but I've seen worse. "

"....I have stayed away from anything to do with that circus because they knew I was an elephant 'sympathizer' and threatened me with future harm if I tried to go public with my story. They are ruthless, almost mobster-like folks and I was afraid."

"Sad to say, using the bullhook in the rectum, vagina and on the breasts, is common, it was one of the things they did to Margaret- They did it to Opal one day and she cried( whimpered) when she peed for a couple of days. They will get a hook in from the rear between the legs and yank upwards as hard as possible, it bleeds like crazy when they do this." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Just imagine the things I didn't see...alot goes on after dark at the circus-many of these men were sex offenders in the first place...there were rumors of men having favorite horses...and worse" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "I guess that over the years I have become 'accustomed' to the images in my head, it must be really shocking to hear about these things for the first time. The thing that made it all worse, was knowing the elephants personally. seeing their very complex personalities and unnervingly human reactions to things being done to them..and to be able to do nothing. On my first or second day with the show, we were still at winter quarters, I was without anything to do and I was just wandering around observing. The elephants were out in 'the yard', a small area behind the barn that they would put the ellys in when they needed to clear some manure out. They were put on a picket, just as they were in the barn and everywhere else they went. I noticed one elephant had a rock and was striking her chain with it. She would lay the rock down, as if to reposition it, and then pick it up and continue striking at the chain. This elephant had an extra set of chain bracelets on her front legs, and I was told later that this was Barbara, and that she wore those chains as she was a 'runner'. They told me that she once broke her chains and then removed the hinges from the barn door, laid it aside, carefully put aside all of the tools and things in the way, and then ate all the grain stores, making herself sick. She was also the one that broke loose one day several years ago, set two of her friends free, and then together they escaped to Hugo lake and were at large for several days before they actually had to call in a big game hunter to track them down! To anyone who may think that an elephant is smart in the way that an exceptional dog is smart, tales like these might sound fabricated...I didn't really believe the things I saw either, I mean, to believe it was to face the fact that an animal with a sentient mind and human emotions was being treated so horrifically...it was very disturbing. I have many more stories like these and I feel that the more widely they are told the better. I have been telling them for years, and have turned more than a few people against the circus in that time. I really am so glad that I have found this site and I definitely want anything I say to be passed around, by whatever venue. My name is Courtenay Tosti, please feel free to use my name or whatever I say on your site! Now if we could just get it onto the billboard at Times Square....."

Many days were so muddy, the trucks couldn't drive into place themselves, so they had the elephants do it. I often saw them straining so hard you could hear popping noises in their legs, and they would shake from the exertion, sometimes they would slip and go down in the mud, and the handlers would club them to get them up, no mercy. After a morning of this they would be so tired their heads would droop, then Suzy would do two shows (after helping to erect the tent), give rides for hours, tear down the show, which had a number of tasks shared between the four "tent ellies", Suzy, Barbara, Minnie, and Bunny. Kay was one, but they retired her from it a couple of months before she died.), and then pull trucks back out of the mud, after they'd settled deep into it for a few hours.

"Dolly was a newly acquired elephant at Carson and Barnes, in 1994. She was small, dark, arthritic and had one eye that hung lower than the other. I was told that she had had a tragic life, including nearly drowning and more than one truck accident. It took her several minutes just to get out of the truck and to step over the picket lines to be chained. She was 'insane' and would swing blindly at whoever walked by, and she would end up hitting the side of the trailer instead with a big bang! Her assigned handler, an idiot named Danny Barnes, was actually talking about making her a ride elephant!! My question is, is anybody here familiar with the current lineup of elephants at C&B, and would know any info on Dolly? She was an elephant in need of being retired...badly"

"Elephants are so massive that even a light brush of their trunk, or as misplaced step can be damaging or even fatal. Incidences of men being crushed between elephants and trailer walls are common. I always kind of felt like the elephants have found a way to kill handlers while making it look like an accident. That may sound like anthropomorphization but if you knew just how smart they really are it wouldn't surprise you. An elephant can feel an insect land on it's skin, so you know it can feel a man crushed into its side. I don't think you are a bad person for feeling that way. I used to secretly hope that Alta would 'accidentally' kill her handler, an especially brutal man, and get him out of her misery. It was often said that Kay had killed 13 handlers in her time, and I'm certain each and every one of them completely deserved it. I don't think that animals have a concept of things artificial and unnatural, I really think that they view us as another animal, a cruel, confusing animal with intentions beyond their comprehension. I doubt that animals such as the big cats and the hoofed animals think about it much at all, they seem to accept their fate, but I am convinced that elephants ponder many things deeply, such as death, love and what the deal with humans is...can you imagine being torn between knowing that you are going to spend the rest of your life in chains, being tortured on a daily basis, or, if you decide to break out, that you will ultimately just be brought back-or gunned down? No wonder so many of the elephants at Carson and Barnes were insane..you could see it in their eyes. I remember watching Suzy one day, she had her eyes closed and she was wringing her trunk in tight knots and would occasionally thump the ground with it, hard. To me, it looked as if she were just overwrought with frustration and sadness...sometimes you would see one of them standing there with tears pouring out of their eyes for no apparent reason, in fact it was seeing Alta do this one day that really began to disturb me about the whole thing, and made me start watching their behavior more closely. The 'crazy' ones, like Kay and Dolly, didn't seem to flinch any more when they were struck, they just stood and rocked endlessly, and stared out at nothing. They were the scary ones too, you got the feeling that they might squish you without even thinking about it."

"I worked for the Carson and Barnes circus for a year in the nineties, and have some real horror stories...way beyond what they show on television! I chose my username because my favorite elephant was a tall, moody girl named Alta. I'm sure she is still with that circus, I wish I could help her. We had a lovely elephant named Mona, who had a malformed or more probably injured back that made her look unusually tall and humpbacked. She could barely get around and moved very slowly so she didn't perform, instead she stood in the chains all day...and never got in trouble thank god. I had left the circus and was living in Indiana when Carson and Barnes visited Evansville, where I was living. Mona had fallen out of the truck and injured herself and so the circus dropped her off at the zoo there..the same one where Bunny was living. She died there, away from her family, and when I volunteered to work at the zoo later they told me Mona seemed to know that she was not going to walk again and just gave up. It is a shame she could not have been rescued, I think she would have lived another 20 years if she had been...she just wasn't able to climb in and out of semi-trailers twice a day. That circus has another elephant ( they have about 23 in total) named Dolly that is similarly crippled, and has had an extremely tragic life...and they were talking about using her as a ride elephant, dear god I hope they didn't, she was blind and would swing at you with her trunk if you came too near, She need to be in a refuge BADLY."

One of the veteran elephant handlers was coming out of his truck, and stopped and had a disagreement with another employee, during which they argued heatedly. Afterwards, when the other employee walked away, the handler turned around and began hitting Opal, one of the C&B elephants, on the face and head with a hook with all his anger and strength..for no reason but that he was mad...I saw another, violent elephant handler do the same thing one day, as he too was coming out of his bunk...he was trying to nap, apparently, and was annoyed by the jingling of the chains caused by the racking of the elephants..he came storming out of his bunk with a baseball bat, and began clubbing Suzy on the head with it, and calling her filthy names..he hit her so hard she went to her knees, the echo from him hitting her skull went right through the pit of my stomach.

Many days were so muddy, the trucks couldn't drive into place themselves, so they had the elephants do it. I often saw them straining so hard you could hear popping noises in their legs, and they would shake from the exertion, sometimes they would slip and go down in the mud, and the handlers would club them to get them up, no mercy. After a morning of this they would be so tired their heads would droop, then Suzy would do two shows (after helping to erect the tent), give rides for hours, tear down the show, which had a number of tasks shared between the four "tent ellies", Suzy, Barbara, Minnie, and Bunny. Kay was one, but they retired her from it a couple of months before she died.), and then pull trucks back out of the mud, after they'd settled deep into it for a few hours.

Click here to Read More Stories from Courtenay and see photos she took.

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