Renaissance Festival

The Minnesota Renaissance Festival is one of many such events in the United States and is the second largest of them all. Visitors strut around the festival grounds wearing animal skins, animal tails, and some even wear animal bodies like coyotes (minus the insides) around their shoulders. One of the top attractions is eating turkey legs, which look similar to chicken legs but on steroids. For those who want to interact with or watch live animals performing for humans there are many options to choose from; horses used for jousting shows and rides, ponies for pony rides, farmed and exotic animals for petting zoos, camels for camel rides, and the most lucrative of them all—elephants for elephant rides.

The elephants and camels used for rides are enslaved by a Texas-based company called Trunks and Humps. Each day of the Renaissance Festival there are 3 camels and 3 elephants on location for rides. Up to 4 people can ride on top of an elephant and up to 2 people can ride on a camel. Elephants who aren’t being actively ridden are kept inside a tight dirt enclosure that’s closed off with electrified wiring. The camels who aren’t being actively ridden are tied to stakes in the ground.

Visitors who ride the animals get to experience going around in a circle one time before they are dropped back off at the platform. The camels are pulled and dragged along in circles by their handler and the elephants walk freely in a circle with their handler and his threatening bullhook. The bullhook is a control device that can cause immense pain to sensitive areas of an elephants body with it’s sharp metal tip. The elephants remain compliant to their handlers desires so they don’t have to experience more suffering than what they already endure. One of the elephants is named Chrissie and she was part of an undercover investigation many years ago where her trainer, Mike Swain, could be seen beating her with a golf club, electric shocks, and a bullhook.

Those who watch the animal rides can see that these animals don’t participate in this work or walk around willfully. Clear, yet minor, acts of resistance can be seen occasionally. The camels lay on the ground as they are clearly exhausted and the elephants express clear signs of distress and frustration as they sway around in their enclosure.