Post-Circus Depression

We decided to take Lucas to the circus for his birthday present. See, he watches all these shows about trains and they always talk about the circus trains in the show and he gets so excited. We thought it would be a fun surprise to take him to the circus.
Our tickets were for the 11:30 show on Saturday. Unfortunately we kept him up until 10:00 Friday night and he didn't sleep in at all Saturday morning, so he was already grouchy as we drove downtown. We thought it was going to be a complete nightmare, but he was ok once we got there.
As we were walking in, some people handed us a flier with "circus information." It was PETA talking about animal abuse at the circus. Then it hit me: I'm not a circus person. We never went to the circus when I was little. I always thought the circus was mean and I started to feel guilty. Hoping that things had changed, I put their flier in my back pocket.
We got there early for the little pre-show where you could go down on the floor and meet the clowns, watch magic and performers. We missed the animal open house by about 5 minutes when we got there, but I was really curious to see the animals.
About 15 minutes before the show we took our seats. As I sat down the PETA flier painfully poked me in the bum, reminding me of my decision to fund animal cruelty. Lucas happily munched on a granola bar and I realized I should have packed a lunch (instead we ended up sharing a hot dog, a little pizza, some popcorn, and about a month's worth of sodium).
The show started with lots of music and excitement: a parade of animals, dancers and crazy clowns. Lucas fell asleep after probably 15 minutes. We thought it best that he take a little nap anyways. He didn't miss much, except for the dogs, which happened to be the only animals I didn't feel sorry for.
They had zebras and horses basically come out and run in circles. They all looked irritated. The elephants all looked sad. The tigers looked really ticked off. Not only was their trainer in their cage with a whip, but there were people outside the cage poking them if they didn't move when they were supposed to. It was obvious that the tigers didn't want to perform their tricks. And quite frankly, the animal stuff was pretty boring. The circus doesn't need animals - the circus folk are all the entertainment you need. Of course without the animals, we wouldn't have had the fun of watching people scurry to clean up animal poo and dodging the spotlight during performances.
Oh and another thing, circus people. Your music is annoying. You don't need constant music. Sometimes we want to be able to hear ourselves think.
Anyhow, we had a lovely day. We probably should have saved $60 and taken him to the park to ride the train, but it was an adventure.
Ben and I enjoyed the people who got shot out of cannons. They were awesome. Evan, we learned, hates the sound of a canon. As for Lucas, I think he enjoyed his first and last circus.

From now on I'm boycotting circuses with animals. We'll just go on a safari instead.

Left: The elephants practicing their natural herd formation. Right: Asia, the elephant, after painting a picture during the preshow. Probably giving us all the bird in elephant language :)