Elephant parade!! Or a mid-week off-campus (mis-)adventure

This week, the Ringling Bros. circus is supposed to start at Madison Square Garden. Every year, around this time they march the elephants in from Queens and across 34th street to MSG. According to the NYC website this was supposed to be March 21 at 11:30pm. I assumed this would be accurate, which isn't unreasonable because the city should to know when the street is going to be closed. So a bunch of friends and I went downtown to see the elephants. But there were no elephants. The cops at Penn Station said that they had been brought in around 3:00am that morning. Adding insult to our disappointment, they also thought we were tourists... wtf?