Courtesy: Jaime Lynn/Facebook
UPDATE (WKOW) – The show goes on for Kelly the Elephant who escaped early Friday from the Circus World elephant enclosure.
The African elephant unhinged the lock to her enclosure, opened the door, and roamed the nearby neighborhood for about an hour. She even managed to grab a snack or two during her adventure. After the Sauk County Sheriff's office alerted the Circus World Executive Director, Scott O'Donnell, and a trainer quickly caught up to the elephant and escorted her back home.
O'Donnell says an elephant's trunk has so many muscles that it's strong enough to open the door of an enclosure. He also says they are very smart animals.
“She very methodically overnight worked on some nuts and bolts at the elephant enclosure and opened up the door,” said O'Donnell.
Before heading back to Circus World, Miss Kelly took a few bites out of a neighbor's garden. Her snack of choice was marigolds and daffodils that were supposed to be in an upcoming contest. The elephant also broke the neighbor's bird feeder and tore up some other plants. The neighbor, Joanne Stark, says she is just grateful there wasn't any more damage.
"It could have been worse," said Joanne.
Miss Kelly weighs 8,400 pounds, according to O'Donnell . She is so large, you can actually see elephant-sized foot prints in the neighbor's lawn.
According to a Baraboo Police Chief Mark Schauf, the town has protocols for these kinds of things. They also are talking about ways to possibly revamp the protocols so this doesn't happen again.
"We've already had animal control come down here to speak with the training staff so we can try to brainstorm other solutions so that we don't have a repeat performance," said Schauf.
Circus World believes two elephants, who are sisters, worked as a team to unlock the pen overnight. Miss Kelly performed as scheduled the same day with her older sister.
This is not the first time an elephant has escaped from the site. The same thing happened to Miss Myrtle back in the 60s, when she walked into town and spooked a women doing laundry.
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For more on this story: http://www.wkow.com/story/35787485/2017/06/30/elephant-back-at-circus-world-after-getting-loose-in-baraboo-neighborhood