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WILKES-BARRE TWP. — Sitting on a folding chair and swinging her legs, 5-year-old Anika McCloe said she enjoyed the cereal she had for breakfast a few hours ealier.
But when she considered the bright red apples, orange carrots, yellow bananas, green cabbages and whole loaves of bread piled onto several tables outside the Mohegan Sun Arena on Friday morning, the little girl decided the “Elephants’ Brunch” looked mighty attractive, too.
“I like carrots and apples,” she said.
Anika liked elephants, too, raising her hand eagerly when Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey ringmaster David Shipman asked her and about 20 other youngsters from the Catholic Youth Center’s childcare program if they were fans of the circus’ largest performers.
The circus’ four-day engagement at the arena, which ends Sunday, marks the last time the huge pachyderms will perform before they retire to a 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida. Their Friday morning feast, which they consumed as the children watched, may have been their last public brunch.
Pointing to what looked like a finger at the end of each trunk, Shipman said elephants can use that appendage to pick up a piece of fruit or an entire loaf of unsliced bread — the bread is a favorite treat — and carry it to their mouths.
“They’ll eat 150 to 300 pounds of food every single day,” he said, adding they’ll drink “up to 1,000 gallons of water.”
Elephants enjoy water not just for drinking, he added, but for playfully submerging, with just the tip of their trunk out of the water, like a snorkle. “They’re like a submarine,” he said.
The trunk has about 150,000 muscles, Shipman said, compared to a mere 635 in the entire human body.
The five elephants chowing down ranged in age from 6 years to 48, the ringmaster said. The younger they are, the more pink their ears appear, he pointed out. As they age, the ears gain a spotted appearance.
The children laughed and applauded as the elephants ate their final treat, breaking open watermelons with their huge feet and scooping out the pink flesh with their trunks.
Seeing the elephants retire is bittersweet, said clown Dean Kelly from Kansas City, Kansas. “They’re part of the family.”
