Aida Scott takes a photo with Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday in front of an elephant named Paige at the Texas GOP convention in the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
The 8,600-pound elephant in a feathered headpiece that paraded through the Texas GOP convention brought a grand finale to Gov. Greg Abbott’s speech, but the animal’s backstory is less uplifting.
Paige came to the convention Friday from Trunks and Humps near Houston, one of only half a dozen traveling elephant menageries remaining in the United States.
The business run by Bill Swain has federal Animal Welfare Act violations going back decades for risking human and animal safety, including in December when a woman was kicked in the head by a camel at a church nativity event.
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A 2004 undercover investigation by Animal Defenders International identified Swain’s son as the man pulling an elephant to the ground with a sharp bullhook and kicking her in the face – and beating other elephants with a golf club and electric prod.
By bringing an elephant to their Houston convention, Texas Republicans elevated the party’s longtime symbol. But it renewed scrutiny of a long-fading practice condemned by animal welfare advocates for cruelty inflicted on one of the world’s most intelligent animals.
A viral moment came Friday when Paige paused on the convention center floor and urinated in front of GOP delegates and guests, drawing widespread banter across social media. Video shows a handler pushing Paige along by poking her in her front left leg mid-stream with a bullhook, a steel-tipped rod used to force elephants into submission.
The tool, painful enough to bring a four-ton elephant to her knees, is one reason why 12 states and hundreds of jurisdictions have banned elephant performances and other traveling animal acts amid growing public opposition to cruelty inflicted on exotic animals in entertainment.
“There’s real suffering that goes behind a spectacle like this,” said Debbie Metzler, managing director of captive wildlife for PETA Foundation. “The elephant is the party’s symbol, so we would expect that they should treat elephants with dignity and respect, and that’s not what happened here.”
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‘Deeply distressing’
John McCrutcheon of Houston has his photo taken with Paige, the elephant at Texas GOP convention.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Abbott’s office did not respond to a phone call or text message seeking comment on the use of Paige in the convention. Bill Swain, owner of Trunks and Humps, and his son, Mike Swain, did not respond to calls or texts.
The industry faced a reckoning in 2016 when Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the country’s largest big top show, ended its use of elephants amid undercover cruelty investigations and shifting public opinion. The circus and its remaining animal acts closed a year later.
Today, just a handful of traveling exhibitors using about a dozen elephants remain, according to estimates by PETA and Humane World for Animals. That does not include the hundreds of elephants displayed in accredited zoos and roadside attractions.
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One of the last standing is Swain’s Trunks and Humps, which operates out of East Texas Elephant Experience near Houston. The business takes its three elephants and two camels to Renaissance fairs, church events and now political rallies across the country.
The business has been tracked for decades by animal welfare advocates.
One of the facility’s elephants is Krissy, the animal filmed in Animal Defenders International’s video 20 years ago allegedly being beaten by Mike Swain.
Like Krissy, Paige and their stablemate Jeanie were captured in Africa and brought to the United States around the 1980s, according to Swain’s website. Swain has had the three since the late 1990s, his website states.
Jeanie, an African elephant, chained at East Texas Elephant Experience in a photo obtained by PETA through a public records request. Her stablemate Paige was brought Friday to the Texas GOP convention in Houston.
PETA
Elephants have high biological and mental needs that make them incompatible with life in captivity and in transit to shows for days and weeks in cramped trailers.
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“A stunt like what happened at the convention here is a real recipe for disaster, and it is also why nearly every circus has left these cruel and archaic acts in the past where they belong,” said Metzler of PETA.
Shelby Bobosky, an adjunct animal law professor at SMU, said elephants have infallible memories, mourn dead relatives, form lifelong familial bonds and have such heightened senses of smell they can detect water from miles away.
Paige’s sudden urination at the GOP event, Bobosky said, is evidence of her being overwhelmed by the intense sounds and vibrations in the George R. Brown Convention Center, smells of sweat and chemicals and an environment inappropriate for an exotic animal.
“They possess incredibly sensitive hearing and the sound systems, the roaring applause, the shouting crowds are deeply distressing to their auditory systems,” Bobosky said.
Public and animal safety
As of early 2026, 12 states and 200 jurisdictions have banned or restricted the use of wild animals in circuses and traveling shows, according to tracking by Humane World for Animals.
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Texas advocates in 2021 pushed a bill to ban the public from having direct contact with exotic animals without a permanent, physical barrier – which would have limited Paige’s appearance at the GOP convention. It did not pass the Legislature.
Supporters said the measure, backed by the Texas Sheriff’s Association, was as much about public safety as animal welfare.
They point to past USDA violations involving Trunks and Humps, including in 2025 when the woman was kicked unconscious by a camel; in 2010 for leaving an elephant unattended near a crowd and allowing the public to give others inappropriate food; and in 2001 for unattended elephants at a Renaissance festival.
In 1998, the USDA noted Paige had “extensive” toe cracks on both feet and questioned whether the cause was poor nutrition, according to an inspection report.
Bobosky said the convention moment also could revive efforts to restrict public contact with elephants because “modern ethics” increasingly demand an end to the practice.
Animal advocates have long called for Swain to send his elephants to retire in accredited sanctuaries, which house animals in natural conditions and prohibit exploitation by the public.