Last Chain on Billie: How One Extraordinary Elephant Escaped the Big Top

by Carol Bradley

Overview

The “powerful and haunting” biography of a star circus elephant who rebelled against her handlers and finally found freedom (Jane Goodall).

Against the backdrop of a glittering but brutal circus world, Last Chain on Billie charts the history of elephants in America, the inspiring story of Tennessee’s Elephant Sanctuary, and the spellbinding tale of a resilient elephant who survived a decade of captivity.

Left in the wild, Billie the elephant would have been free to wander the jungles of Asia with her family. Instead, traders captured her as a baby and shipped her to America, where circus trainers taught her to carry humans, stand on a tub and balance on one leg. For decades, Billie crisscrossed the country under miserable conditions—chained, beaten, and forced to perform stunts under harsh lights and blaring music.

Finally, she got a lucky break. As part of the largest elephant rescue in American history, Billie wound up at a sanctuary for performing elephants in Tennessee. But, overcome with anxiety, she withdrew from the rest of the elephants and refused to let anyone remove a chain still clamped around her leg. Her caregivers began to wonder if Billie could ever escape her emotional wounds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250025708
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/26/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	337
Sales rank:	556,355
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

CAROL BRADLEY is an award-winning former newspaper reporter and the author of the critically praised Saving Gracie: How One Dog Escaped the Shadowy World of American Puppy Mills. She studied animal law at Harvard University, where she was one of two dozen journalists worldwide chosen in 2003 to spend a year as a Nieman Fellow. She lives in Montana with her family.

Read an Excerpt

ONE

LOSING A FAMILY

 

Before the ruckus of the circus, before she’d taken the first whiff of sawdust or popcorn or cotton candy or heard the rabble’s roar, she was a baby elephant in the lush, jungly wilds of India. On the day she was born she would have landed with a thud, encased in a birth sac her mother would have torn open with her trunk. She would have stood just three feet long and three feet tall and weighed less than 200 pounds—not much bigger than a Great Dane. To introduce her to her new world, her mother would have nudged her along the ground until she let out her first squeal. Minutes later she would be standing, and within a couple of hours she would have figured out how to scoot her tiny body under her mother’s, reach up to grab a mammary gland, and suckle her first meal.

We can only surmise this, of course, because no one witnessed Billie’s birth. No one was there to record the day she was born or even the year. And yet it’s reasonable to assume that in the beginning she was free to live as elephants should, her days spent in the company of her aunts, sisters, and cousins, at liberty to wander and frolic in the sun, and keeping close to her mother. Baby elephants seldom stray more than a hundred yards from their mothers in their first years.

Then, of course, came the capture, and that was just the beginning. The men who snared Billie would have held her for weeks, fenced in, all four legs shackled, and likely beaten into submission. She may have been starved at first, maybe kept awake all day and all night for several days—whatever it took to break her spirit. The isolation, the food deprivation, all of it was intended to let her know that she was embarking on a new life now and, no matter how big she grew to be, she was no longer in control. Not now or ever again.

She surfaced in America in 1966, at the age of four, at Southwick’s Zoo in Mendon, Massachusetts, a small enterprise tucked up a slender, meandering road on what used to be a dairy farm. Danny Southwick imported all manner of exotic wildlife, not just for his family’s zoo but for other parties, and one of the areas he imported elephants from was the Delhi region of India, so it stands to reason Billie was captured there, too. By the time she arrived in Massachusetts the zoo had 1,300 types of waterfowl, two lion cubs, a grizzly bear, tigers, a leopard, a camel from Arabia, a chimpanzee, some wallabies, and a hamadryas baboon.

Most of the elephants Southwick’s imported were two years old and prematurely weaned. Almost all of them were females and almost all arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, one of thirteen U.S. ports that permitted the entry of wild animals. The elephants were caged in wooden framed boxes, their legs tied to the frames for the duration of the fifteen-hour flight from India.

Unlike the bigger, more volatile African elephants, who arrived as wild as they had ever been, Asian elephants came partially tamed: not yet able to perform tricks, but docile enough to be handled. Danny Southwick’s sister, Justine Brewer, who now runs Southwick’s Zoo, remembers Billie being four to five feet tall and cute and sweet, not one to cause any trouble. Whether she gave rides to children is unknown; Brewer believes she was too young to do so. But she does remember the elephant’s name: Popsicle, Popsy for short.

The family hired a trainer, Junior Clarke, to work with her. In his late twenties with dark, slick-backed hair, Clarke worked for the Providence zoo, and for several years before that he’d partnered with Roy Bush to train eight elephants owned by Hunt Bros. Circus, one of dozens of small circuses that traveled the countryside. Several times a week he drove the twenty-four miles to Mendon to teach the young elephant how to perform simple tricks, the kind zoo-goers expected to see zoo elephants do. Otherwise she was left to mill about in her yard.

Had Popsicle been able to remain with her mother, the emotional part of her brain likely would have thrived, experts now know. Growing up surrounded by her family would have infused her with the resilience needed to cope with stress, communicate socially, and show empathy toward fellow elephants. Scientists have since learned that severing the mother-baby attachment too soon can cause the circuits in a vulnerable calf’s brain to thin down, especially in the part that processes emotions. The psychological damage caused by putting a baby elephant in a zoo by herself can be incalculable.

What must it have been like to be in a new place, a tiny enclosure so much more constricted than the open jungle she had been used to? Massachusetts winters are snowy and cold. An elephant accustomed to tropical temperatures would have had to spend much of her life there indoors. For a time she had company, an elephant named Anna, but in all probability Popsy spent much of her time at the zoo by herself. A half-century ago, zoos viewed animals as objects of entertainment and amusement. Little thought was given to their need for enrichment or company.

Popsicle might have spent the rest of her life at Southwick’s Zoo if Danny Southwick hadn’t decided to sell her the year she turned ten. Maybe she was getting too big to enchant patrons. An elephant grows at the rate of an inch a month until it turns three and doesn’t reach its full growth until the age of twenty-five or so, but she was clearly no longer a baby. Her early records no longer exist and Danny Southwick is long deceased, so no one knows why he chose to get rid of her. Only that he did. The zoo advertised her for sale, and a man named John Cuneo Jr. decided to look into buying her. Which meant that Popsicle’s life was poised to change in a very big way.

TRACKING THE ELUSIVE BEASTS

By the 1880s, the two biggest circuses in the country, Barnum & Bailey and Adam Forepaugh, had sixty pachyderms between them and that still wasn’t enough. The rival circuses engaged in a fierce battle over who could trot out the first white elephant, considered sacred in Asian cultures. Adam Forepaugh tried to trump Barnum with the “Light of Asia,” a baby elephant that had been painted with fifty coats of plaster of paris (and had broken out in blisters and sores). Barnum countered by claiming to have imported a white elephant from Burma for $100,000. It, too, was a hoax.

Capturing an elephant was the hard part. In the early 1800s, hunters in Borneo and Java often dug pits, covered them with poles and branches and laced them with food to trap elephants, but that was highly risky: an elephant who plunged into a deep pit could easily emerge with bruises and dislocated bones and often died from stress or self-induced starvation.

In Africa, native hunters sometimes used small dogs adorned with small wooden rattles or bells to track down elephants. The hunter would follow the sound of his dog’s rattle and set off on a shortcut to waylay the elephant.

Other hunters tracked down mother elephants who had babies by their side and weren’t able to escape quickly enough. While some of the hunters distracted the herd by chasing a single animal, others would hop off their horses, sidle up to the nursing elephants and sever the tendon in one of their hind legs. As the mother elephant, bleeding and hobbled, struggled to stand, the hunters would capture the baby and tie its legs. They would kill the mother, skin and eat her, and harvest her tusks.

The work was incredibly dangerous, often deadly, but importers didn’t care. “[Natives] don’t cost much—only five to six dollars apiece,” Paul Ruhe, a hunter with the Reiche Brothers, once told circus owner W. C. Coup. “The sheiks are paid in advance, and do not care whether the poor huntsmen get out of the chase alive or not.”

The human toll was worth it to obtain the prize—baby elephants. Hunters transported the young animals to a compound, confined them, and kept them alive with goat’s milk.

 

Copyright © 2014 by Carol Bradley

Foreword © 2014 by Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Foreword Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick xiii

Prologue 1

Capturing Elephants

1 Losing a Family 5

Tracking the Elusive beasts

2 Drawn to the Big Top 10

Rounding Up the elephants

3 Learning the ropes 25

Fooling the elephant

4 one-legged Stands 41

Long vOYAGE TO America

5 The hawthorn Five 52

Seesaws, Grass Skirts, and water skis

6 Life on the Road 60

Forcing elephants to Perform

7 Acting Out 78

Blocke and Tackle and Chains

8 A Sancturary Takes Shape 90

Coercion, Not Kindness

9 Trouble for Cuneo 105

"Bad" Elephants

10 Space and silence 122

Conquering an Elephant

11 The crackdown begins 134

Going Rogue

12 Mired in Bureaucracy 143

Hollywood Comes Calling

13 Setbacks in Illinois 157

The Tale of Baby Boo

14 Caravan to Freedom 167

Big Mary's Tragic Fate

15 The Start of a new life 178

The Short Life of Baby HUtch

16 The Conundrum of ZoOS 191

tHE Plight of Ziggy

17 Spotlight on Abuse 206

A New Wave of Elephants

18 Bad Days, Good Days 232

Chains, Hooks, and HOT shots

19 Unchained at Last 244

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

06/09/2014
Journalist Bradley (Saving Gracie) chronicles the bitter-sweet life of Billie, an Asian elephant abducted in the wild and forced into the cruel world of circus performing. In 1972 Billie was purchased by Chicago millionaire John Cueno Jr. for his exotic animal menagerie, and for decades hauled across the country to perform in circus after circus, working the "same mind-numbing routine." In 1996, when Billie and two other elephants finally enter retirement at one of Cueno's facilities, they are met with more dismal conditions. When Billie is finally relinquished in 2005, she is sent to the Elephant Sanctuary where former trainers Carol Buckley and Scott Blais begin the slow process of her mental and physical recovery. Interspersed throughout, Bradley recalls American history's most famous elephants, stories marred by tragedy, like Topsy, electrocuted by Thomas Edison in 1903, and Big Mary, hanged by a crane for killing a trainer in 1916. She concludes with the shady dealings of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The mistreatment of circus elephants, historically and presently, has been detailed elsewhere, but every animal's story is important and Billie's features a rare happy ending. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Readers will want to stand up and cheer for Billie as she struggles to remain true to herself in the face of great odds, and they'll applaud the Elephant Sanctuary for offering this vulnerable but resilient elephant a chance at a new life. This ground-breaking book about the enduring strength of one of our most majestic creatures will capture hearts everywhere.

New York Times bestselling author of The Eighty-Do Elizabeth Letts

Last Chain on Billie deserves a standing ovation! It is a heart-rending and, unfortunately, deadly accurate description of elephant suffering in circuses and zoos. Please read Last Chain on Billie. It will help you understand why the animal rights movement is sweeping the country.

legendary game-show host and ardent animal-welfare Bob Barker

Last Chain on Billie is powerful and haunting. I urge everyone to read and share this important – and beautifully written – book.” —Jane Goodall

“Last Chain on Billie deserves a standing ovation! It is a heart-rending and, unfortunately, deadly accurate description of elephant suffering in circuses and zoos. Please read Last Chain on Billie. It will help you understand why the animal rights movement is sweeping the country.” —Bob Barker, legendary game-show host and ardent animal-welfare activist

“Last Chain on Billie brings the reader on an insightful, behind-the-scenes journey to witness Elephant experience in circuses and zoos. Not only do we learn about the realities of captive life, but also about the culture in which we live that has brought such anguish to the gentle Elephant. Billie's story compels us to reconcile how it is that our species, humans, do things to Elephants, that despite, their might and comparability in mind, they never do to us. This book represents a critical step on the path toward reconciliation with animal kin and human salvation.” —G.A. Bradshaw Ph.D Ph,D, Founder and Director, The Kerulos Center, and author of Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity

“Heartbreaking though it is, Last Chain on Billie will lift your spirits. You can't help but root for this feisty, determined elephant who refuses to yield to her human tormentors, and ultimately discovers that people can be kind, too.” —Virginia Morell, author of Animal Wise

“Readers will want to stand up and cheer for Billie as she struggles to remain true to herself in the face of great odds, and they'll applaud the Elephant Sanctuary for offering this vulnerable but resilient elephant a chance at a new life. This ground-breaking book about the enduring strength of one of our most majestic creatures will capture hearts everywhere.” —Elizabeth Letts, New York Times bestselling author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion

“After reading this heartfelt, poignant and deeply moving book, you will never look at an elephant the same way again. The narrative is at once brutal, uplifting and gripping. It is almost impossible to grasp the unspeakable cruelty these magnificent, intelligent beings have endured for so many years, all in the name of "family entertainment." But as Carol Bradley writes with exquisite detail and painstaking research, there is hope yet for these captive animals, and for the human race that has made them suffer so needlessly.” —David Kirby, New York Times bestselling author of Animal Factory and Death at SeaWorld

“Last Chain on Billie is a fact-filled page-turning biography of a magnificent circus elephant's long, painful, and unpredictable journey from reprehensible confinement to freedom. It is at once riveting, haunting, and inspirational. Billie's story kept me up at night - tearful and joyful - as she entered and then wouldn't leave my heart. I also was deeply moved by the selfless work of the wonderful people who ultimately were able to free her once and for all so she could live out her life in safety and peace and with the dignity she so deserves. This outstanding and groundbreaking book will make a difference for other circus elephants and other 'entertainment animals' who find themselves living horrific and hopeless lives filled with fear, stress, and uncertainty. It gave me hope.” —Marc Bekoff, author of Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed, The Emotional Lives of Animals, and Rewilding Our Hearts

“Today, Billie must celebrate every day, for she enjoys a more normal life, thanks to caring humans who spoke up for her and her like. Although the dream of returning to her homeland and her family can never be fulfilled, at least she has other elephant friends and caring humans who treat her kindly. Her story will go a long way towards helping others and saving them from a cruel life of bondage and servitude. Her story will educate people around the world about the nature of her iconic species, sparing many other young elephants miserable captivity.” —Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick DBE, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Nairobi, Kenya, and author of Love, Life, and Elephants

“...both heartrending and uplifting...a well-researched winner.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Vivid...A moving and informative account of the plight of trained elephants in the U.S.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Last Chain on Billie is a wonderful book. It is well-written, well-researched, and well thought out. You cannot read it without realizing how extraordinary elephants are and how extraordinarily bad humans, until only very recently, have treated them. To understand what has happened to change our attitude, I can think of no better book than this. It is a labor of love, and I know many people will respond in kind. Anyone who loves elephants will love this book.” —Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D., author of Dogs Never Lie About Love and Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil

From the Publisher

2014-06-05
A behind-the-scenes look at the life of circus and zoo elephants.While centered on the story of one performance elephant, Billie, Bradley (Saving Gracie: How One Dog Escaped the Shadowy World of American Puppy Mills, 2010) exposes the seedy, harsh world that all circus and zoo elephants endure in order to learn the unnatural tricks that entertain the public. Vivid descriptions of the history and evolution of the performing elephant world, where brutality by human trainers, substandard living conditions and isolation have forced elephants into submission, merge with the personal storyline of Billie, who was captured as an infant. First used to provide rides to children, Billie soon entered the circus world, where she was trained to do tricks along with four other elephants. "For five months,” writes the author, “Billie had divided her time between the back of a truck, a makeshift yard outside the circus arena and, for a few minutes a day, performing." As the years passed and Billie was trundled back and forth across the United States, she became testy or "snappy." Bradley identifies other elephants that also became angry and turned on the bullhook-wielding trainers, who were badly injured and sometimes killed. During the 1990s, animal rights activists and a few elephant trainers became angry at the cramped and unhealthy living conditions of elephants across the country, and Bradley enlightens readers on the development of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, a nonprofit reserve that harbors aging elephants. With the sanction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Billie and many other “retired” elephants were moved to the sanctuary, which provides them with a safe and peaceful place to live their remaining years. Graphic details of animal abuse may offend some readers, but the overall story is worth enduring those passages.A moving and informative account of the plight of trained elephants in the U.S. and the efforts of those who have created an asylum for them.

Kirkus Reviews