Video: Escaped circus elephant stops traffic in Montana

The sound of a vehicle backfiring spooked a circus elephant while she was getting a pre-show bath in Butte, Montana, leading the pachyderm to break through a fence and take a brief walk, stopping noontime traffic on the city’s busiest street before being loaded back into a trailer.

Viola, an Asian elephant with the Jordan World Circus, still participated in two performances Tuesday after her time on the lam in the southwestern Montana city of about 35,000 people that in the late 1800s was the world’s largest copper-producing area.

Viola was getting a bath behind the Butte Civic Center just after noon on Tuesday when she was startled, Civic Center manager Bill Melvin said.

She went through a “kind of rickety” fence and went onto Harrison Avenue, a four-lane street, stopping traffic and causing folks to pull out their cellphones to take photos and video. Viola walked about half a block in the road before turning into the parking lot of a convenience store and casino, Melvin said.