By GARY DEMUTH

Salina Journal

ELLSWORTH -- Elephants are hard to find in Kansas.

That's why Lukas Sebesta likes going to the circus. The circus and the zoo are the only places Lukas can see his favorite animal.

"I can't wait to take an elephant ride," said Lukas, 8, the son of Susan Kurz-Sebesta and Mark Sebesta, Wilson.

Lukas was in Ellsworth with his mother to get a sneak preview of the Culpepper & Merriweather Circus, a Hugo, Okla.-based traveling circus that stopped in town to give two performances Thursday evening.

The Sebestas and other area children and their parents drove to Ellsworth's Recreation Center on Thursday morning to see circus workers raise the Big Top, or main tent, where clowns, trapeze artists, jugglers and animals would later perform.

The onlookers were introduced to some of the circus animals, which included a pair of small elephants, several ponies and a 3-week-old baby tabby tiger, which had a light yellow tint in contrast to a tabby tiger's traditional orange stripes.

"He's bottle-fed every three hours," said Brent DeWitt, the circus' press representative and sideshow barker. "It'll be another four weeks before he starts eating solid food. Then he'll gain a pound a day."

The children oohed and aahed at the cute, mewling tiger, but DeWitt warned them not to try to pet him as they would a typical house cat.

"It's still a wild animal," he said. "You can train a wild animal, but you can never tame them. They are not pets."

The children were suitably impressed.

"I'm a cat lover, but I don't want to pet a tiger," said wide-eyed Noah Erichsen, 5, son of Ellsworth residents Brenda and Chris Erichsen.

DeWitt, a native of Germany who has been involved with circuses since he was 7, has become used to seeing the wide eyes and dropped jaws of children-- and many adults.

"The circus is one of the last bits of real magic left in the world," he said. "Everyone gets to be a kid again."

Next year, Culpepper & Merriweather Circus will celebrate its 25th year of operation. The circus travels from March through October and employs 26 performers and about a dozen laborers. The jobs of laborers include raising and lowering the Big Top, doing maintenance work and driving a fleet of nearly 20 trucks and RVs.

The trucks carry about two dozen animals that include elephants, tigers, lions, horses and even trained pigeons.

The circus is on the road seven days a week, setting up in a different town each day, mostly small towns in the Midwest and West Coast.

"We love small communities," DeWitt said. "There's not as much going on in smaller communities, and there's something special when a circus comes to your town."

The circus pulls its caravan into a town early in the morning and usually begins setting up the Big Top tent about mid-morning.

The 14-year-old tent is 120 feet long by 80 feet wide and stands 30 feet tall at its highest point. It weighs 3,600 pounds and is put together from the outside rim to the center using 50 poles and 100 stakes.

It takes about three hours to put up the Big Top tent, bleacher seating and lighting, and about 90 minutes to take them apart after the last evening performance, DeWitt said.

Then it's on to the next town, where the whole process is repeated.

"We have a self-contained, moving city," he said. "We carry everything but an audience, which we hope is there every place we go."

The circus was brought to Ellsworth as a fundraiser for the Ellsworth Chamber of Commerce, which will receive a small percentage of advance ticket sales to support chamber activities, said chamber director Nick Slechta.

"It's something we wanted to bring in for our community," he said. "It's been quite some time since we had a circus here."

Caden Whetzel, 7, was excited to see a circus in his hometown.

"I like the horses and all the clowns," said Caden, son of Ellsworth residents Kim and Steven Whetzel.

When circus workers see the joyous and awed looks on children's faces, it makes all the hard work involved in the circus life worth it, DeWitt said.

"It's a hard life for sure, but there's something wonderful about this life, too," he said. "You make friends all over the world."

nReporter Gary Demuth can be reached at 822-1405 or by e-mail at gdemuth@salina.com.