P52, Somewhat: Week 4, "Animal"

I am the mother of a 3-year-old. And my 3-year-old, like most other children his age, is absolutely fascinated with animals. Cats, dogs, gerbils, cows, giraffes, fish—if it's an animal, he's interested. So when I saw that this week's photo topic was "animal," I knew that my subject for the photo would likely be something that is already a part of Kaleb's life. I began a few weeks early, snapping pictures of our family's pet cat and gerbils, as well as any number of Kaleb's favorite stuffed animals left lying around the house.

And in the process, I came up with many shots I liked.

But none that I quite wanted to post for this week's P52.

On January 14, my mom and I took Kaleb to the Pensacola Civic Center to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The troupe touring in our area is presenting a show called "Bash," which had an hour-long pre-show event open to all ticket holders. We got to go down on the show floor, meet some performers, and Kaleb got to be part of several activities to make kids feel like part of the show.

During the course of the pre-show, they were encouraging people to sign up for a raffle, for which the prize would be a free elephant footprint.  We put a couple of entries into the box, and thought it might be pretty fun if Kaleb were to win one.  What hadn't occurred to me was when exactly they were going to make the footprint.  Not until, while we were sitting around the ring on the circus floor, several of the circus performers rolled out a cart with some trays of watered-down paint and began to spread a drop cloth on the ground.  I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see a trainer leading an elephant into the ring.  She walked the elephant around the perimeter of the ring so all the spectators sitting there could wave hello.

Kaleb was stunned into a paralyzed silence.  He didn't move.  He didn't speak.  He was simply amazed to be so close to such a giant animal—the M.C. said she weighed 7,000-ish lbs!  After he recovered form the initial amazement, Kaleb got excited and began to laugh and clap and chatter along with everyone else.  We watched as several performers helped to coordinate the making of elephant footprints, and then they escorted the elephant back to her area backstage.

Unfortunately, we didn't win the footprint, which was raffled off later during the big show.  However, as she left the ring, the 21-year-old elephant, Duchess, was turned toward us and I snapped a pic that Kaleb and I both absolutely loved!

"Duchess" photographed by Sarah Getz on Jan. 14, 2012 for P52 Photo-A-Week challenge.