At midnight every year, sometime in March, the circus comes to town. In NYC, this involves walking elephants down a closed 34th street from the Midtown Tunnel to Madison Square Garden. I posted up in the middle of Hearld Square, thinking that would be best place see the procession. We were 2 hours too early, so we went and got a drink and talked about normal elephant stuff–how tall they are, what kind of sounds they make, alternatives to marching them down a closed city street at 1am…

They finally came, with a wake of people, and I was inevitatably swept along. If you walked at a brisk pace, you could just keep up with them, but if you ran, you could get ahead, take more pictures and see the ring master again. I ran with them from Hearld Square to Madison Square Garden and into the press area by way of sneaking by a police barricade. And then one of elephants took a dump. It was, like the book says, huge. So I left.