One Can Make a Difference

by Ingrid Newkirk

  After six or seven weeks, she went back to her doctor for a cholesterol test. And to this day, she describes how he walked into the exam room, cholesterol report in hand, and began to apologize. Apparently, the laboratory equipment must be broken, he explained, because her cholesterol had seemingly plunged to normal levels—something that was clearly impossible in such a short time.

  “But if this really were my cholesterol level, would I need medicine?” Mom asked.

  “No,” the doctor said. “That’s my point. This is a totally normal cholesterol level. It can’t be right.”

  My mother thanked him and left, drug free.

  When I set up PCRM, I aimed to do more than conduct research studies. We also advocate for more ethical research. When we began, there had been several recent examples of blatantly unethical research practices, some involving humans, others involving animals. And our doctors spoke up about it. In a government experiment, short children were to be injected with a genetically engineered growth hormone to see if it would make them taller. The experiment would have been ethical had the children been deficient in growth hormone, but they were normal, healthy children, whose parents might have been a bit shorter than others. Evidence suggested that the hormone injections would increase cancer risk over the long run and pose other risks. I was horrified to discover that at the other end of the height spectrum, some doctors used massive estrogen doses to try to halt growth in tall girls. As they put it, a tall girl would have trouble finding a husband or getting a job as an airline stewardess, believe it or not, and estrogens could shut down their bone growth. Never mind that they increase the risk of cancer and infertility in the process.

  Our doctors were also concerned about animal experiments. We remembered all too clearly our own experiences in “dog lab”—a ritual in which first- or second-year medical students are told to experiment on live dogs and ultimately kill them.

  The exercise is intended to convey the fine points of physiology, but ends up horrifying many students and desensitizing the rest. I had come to feel that typical animal research included much of the same callousness and inattention to other methods. There must be a way for science to move forward without blood on our hands. We worked with Harvard University to develop a method of teaching medical students by bringing them into the human operating room, where the drugs that had been used in “dog lab” were used in a more appropriate setting and where their effects could instantly be seen on the OR monitors. Today, nearly all U.S. medical schools have abandoned “dog labs.”

  While our work is nowhere near done, the problems—and their solutions—are clearer than ever. We need to break from the nutritional habits that I grew up with and that my family promoted. We need to break with the indifference that allows people to fall victim to illness, on the assumption that picking up the pieces is the most we can do. Most of all, we need to take suffering seriously—wherever it manifests and whomever it affects, and do what we can to heal it.

  When I graduated from medical school, I took the Hippocratic oath. The classic Greek physician’s most important admonition was “First, do no harm.” I chose that as PCRM’s motto, and consider it an important jumping off point for the decisions of everyday life.

  CAROL BUCKLEY

  When Life Gives You Elephants,

  Make Orange Juice

  In the woods of Tennessee, there is a sanctuary for elephants lucky enough to have escaped forever from the hard life of the circus or the boredom of the zoo.You can watch them on a Webcam as they bathe in the lake, stroll up the hills, entwine their trunks in greeting, and play with the dogs (see the Resources section for the Web address).You might even see them making orange juice, but I’ll let Carol Buckley explain that.

  The Elephant Sanctuary, which Carol cofounded in 1995, means a lot to me. Growing up in India, I not only saw elephants in servitude—the howdah on their backs, the ankus or bull hook being dug into their sensitive flesh (yes, elephants can feel a fly land on their skin!)—but I also befriended a mahout, an elephant trainer. He told me the tragic story of how an elephant is “broken,”separated from her mother and sisters and aunts, and how she pines for freedom and family her whole life long. Elephants are complex, social, intelligent beings, and Carol Buckley could hardly have picked a bigger project. Her ambition, her resolve, and her dream are perfect for this book.

  I can remember the very first time I saw an elephant. They were on a little island at the zoo, and what didn’t occur to me until later was that everywhere they turned, there were people staring at them. When I attended college, I took this amazing

  “Semester at Sea” program where we sailed around the world. When we reached Africa, we went on a safari, and that’s when I saw elephants again, only in their real home this time, in lush vegetation. I was struck by how this whole family of elephants was so calm. Along we came, a busload of screaming American girls, and the elephant families didn’t pay any mind. They constantly touched each other with their trunks.

  During my first year at college, I decided to work with animals. I began working with dogs and found I had a knack. One day I met someone who suggested that I learn to be a professional animal trainer. He gave me a pass to get behind the scenes at an animal park and apprentice with the trainers on staff. Thanks to his recommendation I was later accepted as a student at Moorpark College’s Exotic Animal Training and Management Program, which, back then, was focused on training animals for circuses and zoos. Luckily, around that time, I met and became mesmerized by a baby elephant named Fluffie, who was used to draw customers to a tire store! Fluffie was only one year old and had just been imported. In fact, she was the second to last elephant to be imported into California before the Endangered Species Act became law and animal imports were banned. The tire store owner, Bob, let me volunteer to help with Fluffie’s care. She was living in a truck at the tire store, but I lived on a half acre of land and managed to persuade Bob to let me take her home. That meant I had full control of her even on weekends, when she appeared at the tire store to “perform.”

  Fluffie, who I renamed Tarra, was very needy, and I quickly became overprotective of her. She was incredibly smart and very receptive. She loved learning games; everything interested her, and I had to find ways to challenge her continually. She enjoyed playing the xylophone and the harmonica, and would waltz and sit down. I didn’t control her, I used simple requests that she understood, like “come” and “walk” and “sit.” I would ask her to do things, and if she felt like it, she did. If she didn’t, she didn’t. With Tarra, it was a matter of patience, bananas, and waiting for her to do things in her time. Somehow the circus industry got wind of the fact that I was training this baby elephant. A man named Smoky Jones turned up. He offered his services to train Tarra “properly.” He told me that if I carried on being too affectionate to Tarra, she would get aggressive, that if I loved her, I must discipline her. He said she would be brutalized and even end up dead, killed, if I didn’t listen to him and make her obey. I refused to hand her over! Tarra’s owner decided to hire Smoky Jones to train his elephant and me at his premises in Fontana, California. So off we went, Tarra and I, with a few of our belongings packed up in her tiny delivery truck, for four weeks under Smokey’s tutelage. This was initiation into the world of performing elephants.

  One year later, I had secured a contract for Tarra to perform at a theme park. When I got my paycheck, I divided it into two, paying half of all the expenses, including Tarra’s truck repair and fuel, her food, and so on. That made me a partner in her care, so when Tarra’s owner came to take her back one day, I was able to get a restraining order preventing her return. He was livid! “Buy her then,” I was told! “For $25,000!” The going rate for an elephant then was $5,000–$7,000, but he was firm! I wasn’t sure how I would cope, but I also believe that the Universe never gives you more than you need and never gives you more than you can deal with. My parents had faith in me. My father cosigned a loan, and Tarra became mine forever. All
I had to do was stay on track.

  I knew Tarra was growing up and needed a proper place to live. Also, as she grew up she began to show signs of restlessness. She was distracted and not interested in performing. I looked around but couldn’t find anyplace where Tarra would be able to be herself, would be respected for who she is. The idea of starting a sanctuary started to prey on my mind. While I figured out how that dream could come true, I found a Canadian zoo where she could be with seven other elephants, and I was offered the job of superintendent of elephants. So we went there together, but it wasn’t ideal for her; the sight of other elephants frightened her, and she spent all of her time at the gate, bobbing, a clear indication that she wanted out.

  Over the next few years, Tarra and I moved to several different zoos, trying to find a place that met her needs. Finally recognizing that what I was looking for did not yet exist, my partner and I decided to purchase land and create a sanctuary especially for elephants. In 1994, when I heard that Tyke, a performing elephant, was gunned down in the street in Honolulu after running amok and killing her trainer, we knew the time was now. We found a piece of land. It was one hundred and twelve acres, which meant a $130,000 loan. I used some property I owned in California as collateral, and many people who knew Tarra came forward to help. It just started to all come together. Within three years, the Elephant Sanctuary had 15,000 dues-paying members. Up went our barns, we fenced more land, and every year we expanded, buying more and more acreage for the elephants to roam on.

  On March 3, 1995, Tarra set foot on the sanctuary land. Next came our first rescued elephant, Barbara. She was a circus elephant who had been rejected by Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey, but was probably the wisest creature I’ve ever met. She was very knowing, clear about everything, and a great communicator. The minute she arrived, she was a teacher, bringing us closer to understanding the true nature of elephants.

  One unusual thing about Barbara was she used to make orange juice. She didn’t like to eat oranges but loved juice. We’d put down her produce and she’d separate out all the oranges, leave them, and eat everything else. Then she would pull the oranges in, one by one, then squish them with her foot, completely, juicing them, keep the juice in one place, toss the peel away, and then suck the juice up with her trunk!

  Next came Shirley and Jenny. Then Bunny, who had lived alone in a zoo for her entire life. For forty-four years, she had stood in the small flat dirt yard of her zoo enclosure. Her muscles never developed to navigate hills; she didn’t know how to walk on anything uneven. Even a little dip in the ground would throw her. She couldn’t figure out how to step down or up. One day, walking along a shallow creek edge at the sanctuary, she lost her footing and froze in shock, letting her body fall to the ground. I tried to calm her, reassure her, but she was frozen with fear. Then I looked up, and several hundred yards away, I saw Barbara standing in the barn doorway, watching. I returned to reassuring Bunny, trying to get her to relax, when, the next thing I knew, Barbara was crossing the creek. She calmly approached, touching Bunny all over her face and head, gently, with her trunk, then made a little rumble sound and walked away slowly. Bunny got up and followed her. That was Barbara, forever helping the other elephants. She lived only five years.

  Barbara died so peacefully. She came into the barn during the day, which was unusual because it was a sunny day. I left the office and spent the day pampering her; it was my birthday and I wanted to celebrate it with her, scrubbing her, giving her a warm bath, trimming her nails, loving her. She’d just melt into it, she loved the affection. In hindsight, it was like a preparation for her passing. At five o’clock, her feeding time, she ate her mineral ball with goodies, her peanut and molasses ball, her supplements, and then, quite suddenly, she was on her side on the barn floor. We all knew she had a wasting disease. Before, if she could not stand, she would show that she wanted to get up, and we’d help push her up and then hoist her up with a harness built specifically for her. This time, she acted differently; she resisted our help. So we stopped. My eyes met hers, and I got it. She was telling us that she was dying and wanted us to let her go. I heard this from her as if in a voice. Three of us, Joanna, Scott, and I, were with her with our hands on her, and in fifteen minutes her breathing slowed. There was no struggle, no fighting for breath; she just went totally peacefully.

  Tarra loved the sanctuary too. With her, freedom wasn’t new. Even as we traveled together before the sanctuary existed, I would stop every day when on the road, somewhere interesting, let her out of her trailer so she could walk around, perhaps playing in a creek, river, or field. She was like a dog in that way, and we were best friends. Now, at the sanctuary we have eighteen elephants. They have come from all over: fifteen are Asian, three are African. Some of the needy elephants that come here are overwhelmed at first, shocked by the idea that they are free.

  They are incredibly pleased and they all eventually become quite accustomed to it. After all, that’s how it should be.

  There is a Persian proverb, “With kindness and a smile you can lead an elephant by a thread.” This is the founding principle that guides us at the Elephant Sanctuary: respect the elephants and they will do their best to respect you.

  LADY BUNNY

  I Just Want to Be Me

  Lady Bunny has a wicked sense of humor and lives a “wicked” life, as she’ll point out below. “She” is also built like a Mack truck, standing nearly seven feet tall in her skyscraper heels and bouffant updo. With legs so long they should be insured (Bunny claims she tones them by raising them over her head whenever possible), it is hard, as with a Scotsman’s kilt, to resist the thought of taking a look up that micro-mini skirt to see how on earth she has so successfully hidden “her” various bits and bobs.The drag queen founder of Wigstock—New York’s festival of drag—is quite a sight!

  I first met Bunny (Jon Ingle behind all the pancake makeup), or The Bunion as she calls herself, at a PETA event. When one of the Humanitarian of the Year awardees graciously thanked his wife from the podium and the spotlight scanned the audience for a glimpse of this wonderful other half, Bunny leapt to her feet to take the bow as if she were the honoree’s wife. Paul McCartney, who was in the audience, howled with laughter! Later, I went to her “Taste of Bunny” show at the Fez in New York and found myself grinning from the moment her introductory “credits” were announced: thanks for makeup to Sherwin Williams, body by Crunch (Nestlé’s Crunch), and hair by Weed Eater. Over the years, I’ve learned that Bunny is always willing to help anyone who needs help, and not just with a quickie in the stairwell. She adds a unique contribution to this book because she has used her talents and chutzpah to challenge sexual stereotypes in the least serious ways imaginable:to have transexuality and homosexuality seen as something to celebrate rather than scorn.

  Why did I become a drag queen, you ask? I say, well, honey, I don’t know exactly, but I was sketching Marlo Thomas’s flip from That Girl before I was six years old, as well as demanding dolls from my nervous religious parents. Years later, they confessed that they were worried that giving me dolls might make me gay. I told them,“If I was asking for them, I was already gay!” I’ve always identified with feminine things, even before I wore them myself. As a child, I wore my hair long and was sometimes confused for a girl. At ten or eleven, one Halloween I dressed as “a woman” with my best friend, Paul, as “my husband.” With each doorway that I darkened, the fact that I wore a dress, some of mom’s heels and a (totally tragic and frumpy) women’s wig confirmed many of my neighbors’ suspicions about my budding sexuality. Later, as was the fashion in the New Wave era, I wore makeup, and the wigs and heels weren’t far behind. Becoming a “gender-dysphoric freak” struck me as a very natural progression.

  Performing came naturally as well. As a little boy, I’d often tie a sheet between trees in our backyard and invite the neighbors over to watch my plays. I’m sure they were pitiful productions, but it’s telling that, offering nothing, I was able to round up my
sister and other kids in the neighborhood to perform. Since my dad taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, I was sometimes called upon to play the child part in college productions, too. Were these half-assed reviews the foreshadowing of Wigstock?

  In The Winter’s Tale, I played the prince. Wrong gender, but still royalty, honey! In grade school, I was cast in the school variety show as a snake charmer. If I could have looked into a crystal ball I would have seen that in the years to come I would “charm” many “snakes” indeed! I convinced my mom that slanted eyeliner, a la Barbara Eden on I Dream of Jeannie, would “exoticize” my look; together with a turban and harem pants, it might as well have been drag. I assumed that I’d continue acting, but when college hit and I was cast in the supremely dull Our Town as baseball player number two, I remember thinking, “I’ve been forced to act straight throughout high school. I’m ready for some more flamboyant parts—this isn’t ME!” Plus, an actor is a mere pawn. A drag queen is able to be her own costume designer, choreographer, makeup artist, hairstylist, scriptwriter, arranger, director, etc. So I have more input and control with what I do, not that I’m an impossible, controlling monster bitch or anything!

  And why is Wigstock so important? Hmm. Well, the only thing worse than sounding pompous is an old battleaxe like me coyly batting her long, fake lashes in a failed attempt at false modesty, so let me brag a bit about starting Wigstock! In 1982, I moved to Atlanta to study at Georgia State, but who needs a degree to become the town drunk! Besides, I found the future superstar drag queen RuPaul and his cast of crazies far more interesting than the college curriculum of an undecided major. I tagged along on one of Ru’s trips to perform at NYC’s Pyramid Club and never left, rising from the ranks of go-go dancer to Wigstock organizer. I organized the very first one—an all-day drag festival of dancing and music and stage acts, including me as the emcee—in 1985. It was supposed to be a little transvestite festival and about a thousand people showed up! Everyone wanted to see or be seen or both. We had terrific acts every year, from recording artists like Deborah Harry, Deee-lite, and Vickie-Sue (“Turn the Beat Around”) Robinson to big name queens like RuPaul, Lipsynka, and John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig.Wigstock continued to grow and probably reached its zenith with the 1995 release of the thoughtfully named documentary Wigstock: The Movie.