A vehicle backfiring startled a circus elephant into Butte street

AMY BETH HANSON

and BEATRICE DUPUY

The Associated Press

The sound of a vehicle backfiring spooked a circus elephant while she was getting a pre-show bath in Butte, 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 gettin...