Monday, August 07, 2006


Coming into Morelia the other day we saw on one side of the road the cheerful tent of Circo Atayde y Hermanos. I went to this circus when I was 12 in Mexico City. I was keenly aware that this circus, unlike its American counterparts, only had one ring. But it had elephants, tiger, lions and clowns. It was a real circus. As a boy of 8, in Buenos Aires, I had gone to a local circus with a bad circus band (the wind instruments were all out of tune). But the little circus featured a boxing kangaroo.

My granddaughter Rebecca represents a little girl in a strange minority. She is a little girl who was splashed by a killer whale at the Vancouver Aquarium. Her sister Lauren will never experience that. So I wonder if I should press Rebecca to go to the circus ( a real one) and in spite of the fact that the animals are in captivity she will live an event that she can explain to her peers. She can point out to them that circuses are bad by having seen the real thing.

While Rebecca will not go to a circus, she does accept the importance of zoos and does enjoy going to them. Yesterday, Sunday, we attended the local and huge (600 acres) zoo that features a white Siberian tiger and a couple of albino lionesses. The zoo was spotless and the animals had to compete for attention with countless eating places. Some even featured mole poblano. We experienced one sight that will serve Rebecca for many years. We saw a couple of giraffes, a male and a female, gallop (as giraffes gallop,with their necks resembling the undulations of a swimming whale). They did this for ten wonderful minutes as African ostriches scurried to be out of the way. There is no way a National Geographic Channel giraffe could possibly compete.