Every year the Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey circus tours first in Long Island, and then in Manhattan at Madison Square Garden. The train they are on is too big to go through the tunnels into Manhattan, so it’s become a tradition that they unload the animals on the Queens side of the Mid-town tunnel, and walk them through into Manhattan and across the city into MSG. The result is a mini-parade at 12:30am with excited spectators lined up to cheer them despite the late hour on a tuesday night.
Ryan and I met friends there last night, and had an incredible time. What a sight to behold! I find it so cute and charming that they walk holding each other’s tails with their trunks. There were about 8 elephants, and about 10+ horses, and about 4 miniature horses. It was dark and I couldn’t get very good pictures, so the top two are from flickr. The first is the elephants entering the tunnel at last year’s March (via Flickr). The second is also from 2006, a close up of one of the elephants (via Flickr). The bottom two I took: one of the truck going by before the march, taking the circus equipment to the stadium, and one of an elephant as it came by.
