Escaped elephants corralled

 It’s one thing to wake up and smell the coffee. It’s something else entirely to wake up and find an elephant’s “calling card” on the front lawn.
    But that’s what happened yesterday to a woman in this town north of Toronto when the power was accidentally cut to an electric fence keeping three circus elephants from wandering.
    After discovering the fence was no longer electrified, two of the elephants decided to see if the grass really is greener on the other side.
    “I opened the front door and I didn’t know what the smell was,” said Shu Mei. “But not good. And then I saw it.”
    Garden Bros. Circus had set up a compound for the three Asian elephants, “Susie,” “Bunny,” and “Minnie,” in a parking lot.
    Trainer Billy Morris said someone seems to have tripped over the power cord to the fence after he checked on the elephants just before 2:30 a.m.
    “The next thing I knew, the cops came to get me,” Morris said. “Susie and Bunny had gone on the lam.”
    Susie wasn’t far away, sampling the grass nearby. But Bunny kept going.
    A York Region Police dispatcher told patrol cars to be on the lookout for “one outstanding elephant . . . last seen heading north on Crossland Gate.”
    An officer radioed in that he had the “outstanding elephant” in view. “It’s just eating someone’s tree,” he said.
    That was Shu Mei’s tree and Bunny made an untidy meal out of her lilies, too, scattering leaves around.
    “It didn’t wake me,” Mei said. “My neighbour heard something, but she thought it was kids.”
    Police first heard about the roaming elephants when someone passing in a car spotted Susie and called police to say, “We’ve found an elephant.”
    “Sorry?” said the dispatcher, perhaps thinking it was one of those little pink ones that some people see. “How big are we talking here?”
    Ian Garden, president and ringmaster of the Mississauga, Ont.-based circus, said he believed this was the first elephant escape in its 70-year history.
    “Obviously, you don’t want elephants loose in the neighbourhood and we’ll be taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.
    As Garden spoke, Morris was soaping up and hosing down the truants to get them ready for their two performances yesterday.
    “My wife Carolina rides one of them in the ring,” Garden said. “They’re lovely, affectionate animals. And their dung makes very good fertilizer.”
    Shu Mei wasn’t impressed.
    “I didn’t touch it,” she said, ruefully eyeing her chewed-up lilies. “The circus sent someone to pick it up.
    “They gave me tickets for the show,” she added. “I’ll see the elephants there.”