Cyndi Nguyen, please come and get your zebras

City Councilwoman Cyndi Nguyen going for a hat trick during today’s City Council meeting. She’s promoting Universal Circus in New Orleans starting Sept. 12 pic.twitter.com/g7pGAuUsAD

— Kevin Litten (@kevinlitten) September 6, 2018

Those whimsical councilpersons. I had been wondering whatever had happened to Frank Scurlock's hat.  Oh and that tweet gets the name of the event wrong. It's actually the UniverSoul Circus. What, by the way, is a UniverSoul Circus?

Celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 2018, UniverSoul is a highly interactive combination of circus arts, theater, and music that spans genres including Pop, Classic R&B, Latin, Hip Hop, Jazz and Gospel. It embraces and celebrates the unique and familiar aspects of pop culture globally by bringing them center stage with a cast of international performers. UniverSoul Circus is rated as one of the top two circuses in America along with Cirque du Soleil. UniverSoul’s fresh approach to family friendly live entertainment has garnered it a coveted spot as one of Ticketmaster’s top ten most requested family events, along with other shows including Sesame Street Live, Disney on Ice, and Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The circus was founded 25 years ago in Atlanta by concert and theatre promoter, Cedric Walker.

Yeah, alright, so it's a circus. Maybe you don't care for circuses. That would be understandable.  At least this doesn't appear to be some sort of wacky hyper-Christian thing. I was a bit worried when I saw the name.

Anyway, this is all beside the point. The thing is, this particular circus appears to use the neutral ground on Lake Forest as a grazing area. 

Spotting some striped horses in New Orleans is sure to generate questions.

The New Orleans Police Seventh District shared images of three such animals apparently wandering around a New Orleans East neighborhood Monday evening. 

"First, we had puppies, then kittens, then alligators and even a baby hawk....but these four-legged friends take the cake!!!"

And they just left it at that for several hours today so people could speculate about why there were zebras there. It's bad enough when the police withhold critical information. But then the news picked it up and ran with it before getting the story themselves. Because reporting on a social media post without context is just standard practice now. It wasn't until later in the afternoon that we learned we'd all been trolled.

The NOPD later clarified that the animals were out part of the Universoul Circus, that is holding shows nearby through Sept. 23 at Old Lake Forest Plaza. The zebras were out with trainers, the NOPD said, grazing in the area.