A Humane World

Earlier this year, in April, I wrote about Viola, an elderly captive elephant who escaped from a circus in Butte, Montana. She wandered through traffic, in front of a casino, and paused on a residential lawn. Videos show handlers with bullhooks—a tool used to hit and inflict pain on captive elephants to intimidate them—chasing and then corralling Viola in the busy downtown, capturing her and bringing her back to the circus.  

This was not her first time running from her captors, and it was not the first time she had to be caught and brought back to captivity. I noticed that some viewers of the