"The Elephant in the Living Room"
“I liked it, and I don’t like documentaries.”
These were the words my sixteen-year-old daughter uttered after our family viewed “The Elephant in the Living Room,” an award-winning documentary. The film, which released in select theaters on April 1, is about Americans raising the world’s deadliest and most exotic animals as household pets.
The story follows two men: Tim Harrison, an Ohio police officer whose friend was killed by an alligator, protects exotic animals and the public. Terry Brumfield, a big-hearted man, struggles to keep two pet African lions that he loves like his own family. The story grows more complicated when his pets living inside a horse trailer mate and make five.
The director set out to create this film not knowing where the story would take him. He discovered to his dismay that in the heart of America lies a virtually unregulated jungle. This country has more licensing and regulation for dogs than we do for lions and venomous snakes. Meanwhile, the number of tigers living in Texas exceeds the total number of those living in the wild in India. And in 2006, officials received more emergency calls for nuisance alligators in Ohio than in most areas of Florida.
What started as a three-month film project turned into a two-year odyssey as its director faced threats and danger at every turn. People died from snakes strangling them and cougars mauling them. Alligators walked down the streets of Midwestern towns, children played unknowingly with some of Africa’s most venomous vipers found in their garage, a leopard roamed the streets of a major city, an African lion chased cars on a major U.S. highway—all escaped pets.
While the film exposes the growing danger, it also seeks to explain the pull for those who love such creatures. Brumfield, who has major health issues, says his lions did more to heal him “than any doctor could do.”
After watching, viewers will come away having heard no easy answers, but like my teen, they might think twice about wanting to bring home a lion cub.