RUSSIAN CIRCUS---

Moscow Journal
Step Right Up, Kids, the Tiger Will Look Good in Your
Russian Circuses Offer Animals as Props

 

A family had its picture taken with a tiger during intermission at the Nikulin Circus in Moscow.
from:nytimes.com
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
July 10, 2013
MOSCOW — The father knelt beside his hesitant daughter and gently encouraged her to set aside her fears and take a seat.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered in her ear during a family outing to the circus, “it’s just a little kitty.”
But in fact, lounging on a low pedestal in the foyer of the Nikulin Circus in Moscow, and lazily twitching a long, tawny tail, the tigress named Chanel was no kitty at all.
She was a fully grown Siberian tiger, whose trainers use her as a toothy prop in one of the more alarming rituals of the Russian circus: the practice of photographing small children with predators during breaks in the show.
At intermission, she pads out on paws the size of saucers and takes a seat. While children crowd around, the huge and iridescent pools of her yellow eyes gaze back, inscrutable and wild, and wholly mysterious on the pressing question one concerned youngster had for her mother: “Do you think she is full?”
When asked about the risk, Andrei Y. Logulov, a thin, clean-cut chemical engineer who was encouraging his daughter, 11-year-old Diana, to approach Chanel for a picture, shrugged like so many other Russians in so many other contexts.
“Of course this is risky,” Mr. Logulov said, “but risk is everywhere in life. A brick could fall on your head in the street, for example. And this is just a small risk.”
read and see more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/world/europe/russian-circuses-offer-tigers-and-bears-as-props.html?_r=0