Big Stars Take Stroll Circus Elephants Walk To Arena
Like unruly grade-schoolers made to walk in a single-file line, 18 elephants strolled through downtown Spokane on Tuesday.
The wrinkled pachyderms led nearly 50 other circus animals from a train stop off East Trent to the new Spokane Arena - a nearly three-mile walk that blocked traffic, raised eyebrows and delighted the crowds lining the streets.
There were camels and zebras, stallions and llamas - all making their way to the red-and-white tents erected in the Arena parking lot. Twenty tigers and leopards were taken to their cages earlier, in trucks.
It was the first time Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey marched its star performers in Spokane since 1990. The circus kicks off its four-day stint at the Arena tonight at 7:30.
During the parade, a row of trainers tried to keep the elephants linked tail-to-trunk, but a light rain distracted the animals and put them in a playful mood.
They stretched their trunks at a spurting fountain at Spokane Falls Boulevard and Washington and sprayed the foamy water on their backs. Several splashed in puddles and two bickered loudly at the end of the line.
The youngest elephant, 13-year-old Prince, swished his trunk around garbage cans along the way.
“He wants a treat,” speculated Barbara Connors, as she watched from the Spokane Convention Center. Her daughter, 5-year-old Tiffani, pointed at four Shetland ponies.
“Babies!” she said. “Who rides them?”
Her mother shrugged, but a circus trainer said the ponies perform in the show by dashing beneath 30 leaping stallions.
As they made their way down Howard Street and around Mallon, the elephants moved faster, as if they sensed they were getting close. Like watchful parents, trainers caught most of the misbehavers and bellowed out their names.
“Toby! Get in line!” one yelled at an ear-flapping giant. Toby grasped the tail of the elephant in front of him but let go as soon as the trainer walked ahead. Then he reached up and shook an overhanging tree branch with his trunk, releasing a spray of water on his back.
“Hard to believe they’re the stars of the Greatest Show on Earth, huh?” joked Eric Cuthbertson, a marketing director for the circus. “But here they are.”
The parade was delayed nearly two hours after circus crews had trouble driving stakes into the newly paved arena parking lot. Later, they couldn’t bathe the elephants because the water pressure was too low.
“We always have trouble when we come through a place for the very first time,” Cuthbertson said.
Once inside the fenced parking lot, the elephants crowded around buckets of water.
One elephant, a tusked behemoth named Congo, stood next to a trainer who sipped a Pepsi.
Congo, the circus’ only African elephant, curled up her trunk and opened her mouth wide. The trainer poured the pop on her tongue.
“Spoiled,” he grumbled, crushing the empty can. He shared two more soft drinks with his begging friend before cutting her off.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo