By Tim Binnall
Residents of a Montana city got an unexpected preview of a visiting circus' show when one of the attraction's elephants managed to escape from its enclosure and wound up wandering through traffic. According to a local media report, the wild incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon in the community of Butte when the sizeable creature, dubbed Viola, popped out of her pen after a backfiring truck startled her. No doubt intoxicated by the taste of freedom, she set out on the road and began exploring the busy city center to the astonishment of motorists who caught sight of the pachyderm wandering around in the middle of the day.
Recounting her encounter with the creature, Mataya Smith marveled that her husband first noticed the animal and tried to draw her attention to it. "I thought he just meant it was in the parking lot," she recalled, "and then I looked up and was like, ‘No, there is an elephant in the road!" Footage of the creature's misadventure (seen above) shows the sizeable animal deftly crossing a multi-lane road with cars stopping to let the out-of-place pachyderm pass as it makes its way towards a parking lot. Viola's sojourn ultimately wound up being rather brief as handlers from the circus were able to corral the elephant in a mere 20 minutes.