Pachyderms in Cambridge

This post is both a little late and slightly off topic, but it loosely relates to the ongoing Architecture in Cambridge series, to which I hope to return the next time the sun comes out (i.e. March). The above photo was taken at the start of October when the Ringling Brothers Circus came to Boston. It turns out the the circus travels by train, and there is a handy rail yard next to MIT, right behind Simmons Hall. To get from the rail yard to the circus location in downtown Boston, the elephants walk through Cambridge - that's the MIT dome in the background above.





While the walk to the circus takes place in daylight and with the elephants decked out in their regalia, the return trip was at night. I camped out next to the Stata Center and was able to capture these shots. I was particularly impressed by the way the elephants are trained to link trunk to tail.



My friend Cat, who works at MIT and was the source of all the inside info that got us to the right place at the right time, snapped the best photo (above) of the elephants passing the Stata center with her cellphone. (I mean, she used her cellphone's camera to take the photo - elephants can't use the buttons on a cellphone).



Crossing the railway line - almost back to their sleeping compartments.



It was all over too quickly, with just a few steaming piles of pachyderm poo on Massachusetts Avenue to indicate that the elephants had ever been there. As one of the policemen escorting the herd said, "Welcome to Cambridge".