Lions, Tigers and Whips, Oh My!

The Big Lie of the Big Top returns this year to the Champlain Valley Fair.

Circuses parade lions, tigers, and elephants as family entertainment, but for the animals, there’s a darker side of abuse and neglect.

That’s certainly true for the Nerger Lions and Tigers Show, scheduled daily at the Expo and sponsored by Price Chopper.

Judit and Juergen Nerger, who train the big cats, are employees of the Hawthorn Corporation, which leases exotic species to traveling circuses and shows like the one being promoted in Essex Junction.

Hawthorn is a shadowy entity, so anxious to keep its business secret that it doesn’t even maintain a website. The corporation is officially chartered in Illinois as the “National Congress of Animals.” But a little investigation shows that the “Congress” has accumulated $275,000 in fines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violations of the Federal Animal Welfare Act.

The company became infamous in 1994, when a twenty-year-old Hawthorn elephant named Tyke went on the rampage at a performance in Hawaii, crushing her trainer and injuring two other circus workers before embarking on an hour long stampede down the streets of Honolulu. Police finally killed the animal in an 87 bullet fusillade.

An autopsy showed the handler had cocaine and alcohol in his body--and perhaps Tyke did, too. Vodka, up to two quarts a day, is often given to elephants in the Russian State Circus where the Nergers worked for two years in 2000-2001 before bringing their act to the U.S.

Juergen Nerger was in charge of a Hawthorn facility in Illinois in the middle of August, 2008, when the USDA inspected in response to a reported tiger bite. There government veterinarians found seven tigers being held in cages intended only for short-term transport. The law requires that long term enclosures must provide sufficient space for the animals to “make normal postural and social adjustments.” But the animals the vets discovered were in cages just four feet high, with a width of 6'8" and length of 7'3". Two adult tigers, which typically weigh hundreds of pounds each, were stuck in each tiny pen.

Other USDA veterinary reports showed that frozen meat had been left in direct sunlight for over four hours, covered with flies, intended to feed the big cats (April 2009), while another citation two years earlier involved safety. “At the time of the inspection,” according to USDA documents, “the barrier in front of the tigers was one thin rope.” A child or any curious member of the public could have simply slipped under the line and come into direct contact with the tigers. That’s not acceptable—not when over twenty people have been killed in the U.S. and hundreds more injured since 1990 by big cat attacks.

Is the Essex Police Animal Control unit really ready to handle an escaped super predator? And if the Nergers love animals so much, why do they use whips in their training?

If enough people start asking questions like that, Essex Junction just might follow Burlington’s lead and outlaw shows like this altogether.


[If you want to read the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service report for yourself, the document is online at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_welfare/Inspection_Reports/C%20-%20EXHIBITOR/IL/THE%20HAWTHORN%20CORPORATION%20-%2033-C-0053.pdf]