Colorado’s premier July Fourth parade, which each year draws tens of thousands of visitors to Monument, ended with a mystery last summer.

Don’t get this wrong. The parade provided patriotic splendor with scores of entertaining exhibits. There was just one nagging question:

“Where were the elephants?” It was the talk of the ensuing street festival and sidewalk parties.

Elephants paraded by the Colorado Renaissance Festival long have been a favorite in the event and a major reason people travel from the furthest reaches of Colorado and beyond to spend July Fourth in Monument and Palmer Lake.

Last year, they were let down.

“I heard a lot of disappointment and questions as to why we didn’t have elephants,” said State Rep. Don Wilson, mayor of Monument during the 2022 parade. “I don’t think at the time I knew why.”

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It turns out, we can blame radical leftists in the Colorado Legislature. They attacked a tradition at the Colorado Renaissance Festival, which featured elephant rides, a multiyear award-winning entry in the July Fourth parade and an ancient tradition worldwide.

“We won’t have them in the parade again this year. We’re trying to stay in compliance with the new law,” said Kristy Ekiss, operations manager of the Colorado Renaissance Festival.

Instead of elephant rides, the festival will occasionally offer meet-and-greets with the animals. Trust us, the festival is well worth the visit, with or without elephant rides. So are the Independence Day celebrations in Monument and Palmer Lake, which will feature Renaissance Festival knights on horseback, fairies with unicorns, sword swallowers and an assortment of actors.

Senate Bill 135 quietly passed the Legislature in 2021, and Gov. Jared Polis signed it. The law took effect in 2022, “prohibiting certain animals in a traveling animal act.”

The law prohibits animal performance, defining “performance” as “any animal act, circus, ride, carnival, parade, race, performance, or similar undertaking” which requires animals to “participate as accompaniments for the entertainment, amusement, or benefit of an audience.”

The bill exempts horses, certified zoos and animal acts that make leftists feel good – such as those animal exhibits deemed to “impart knowledge or information for educational or conservation purposes …”

It is part of the left’s two-tiered justice system. Do not entertain the hoi polloi celebrating this “racist” country along a small-town parade route. Feel free to display an animal while talking “conservation.” We’re not sure elephants make a distinction.

The law exempts rodeos, probably because Colorado cowboys have low tolerance for left-wing extreme. We know they didn’t carve out rodeos to protect a tradition. If they had, we would still have elephants on parade – with or without riders.

Elephant riding dates to 5,500 B.C. in Egypt. Elephants have played key roles in ceremonies, logging, entertainment and war. The Trung sisters, heroic icons among Vietnamese worldwide, rode elephants to oust China’s Han overlords in A.D. 40.

“This is ridiculous,” Rep. Wilson said upon hearing about the law. “It’s something I will look into.”

Meanwhile, enjoy July Fourth and a full summer of Renaissance mystique in Larkspur. Just be sure to lower expectations for the magnificent tradition of celebrating the elephant – a miraculous creation of nature and God.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board