It's over. The circus. Bethel's own P.T. Barnum must be rolling over in his grave. After 146 years, the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus will perform its last show on May 21 at New York's Nassau Coliseum. Better get your tickets now. While declining ticket sales have been noted as one of the main reasons Feld Entertainment, owner of the circus, decided to shutter the former big top show, you know this three-ring circus performance will be a sellout.

Connecticut had a big place in circus history, thanks to Barnum. Known as the original showman, early in Barnum's career he presented oddities in his American Museum in New York City. By 1871, while a resident of Bridgeport, he started his first open tent circus with W.C. Coup called, P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome and later with James A. Bailey, launching the Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth.

Meanwhile in the Midwest, the original Ringling Brothers circus was founded in Wisconsin in 1884. By the early 20th Century, their traveling show had grown from a small wagon operation to a major railroad circus rivaling Barnum & Bailey's. By 1907, after Bailey's death in 1906, who ran the circus after the death of P.T. Barnum in 1891, the circus floundered. That's when the Ringling Brothers purchased the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Ringling operated the two circuses independently until 1919 when it joined them into, The Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus Combined Shows.

By 1927, John Ringling moved the winter home of the circus from Bridgeport to Sarasota, Fla. And so the circus left the nutmeg state. What remains today is Bridgeport's Barnum Museum, a tribute to its former mayor and America's first great showman.

My Circus Experiences

In the 1960s, I saw my first performance of Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden. The spectacle of galloping white horses with ladies balancing on bareback in ballerina dresses brought joy and wonder to my young horse-crazy life. The bold, big horses pulling chariots depicted in the circus poster that hung on my bedroom wall brought a burst of color and history to my world day after day. But the elephants stole the show. With their sequined headdresses ridden by actors and wild animal tamers - I took it all in - so much going on to digest along with my cotton candy.

By 1967 the circus, then owned by the North family, John Ringling's nephews, was sold to the Feld family. For the next 50 years, Feld Entertainment proudly proclaimed to be the "largest provider of live family entertainment." In the 1970s I went again to the circus at the New Haven Coliseum. It didn't disappoint. It was around that time I discovered a book in the school library, a biography of P.T. Barnum, which gave me a better understanding about how the big-top tent circus developed in this country. In a pre-radio, movie, and TV age, the traveling tent circus stopping in a different city or town each day, was the main form of entertainment for most of the country. The big top finally succumbed in 1956 when the show moved to indoor venues.

I never had children of my own, so I never took the next generation of my family to the circus, like many of my friends. The circus next came to my attention around 2006, while living in Manhattan near the Midtown Tunnel and learned that the circus walked the elephants through the tunnel from the Brooklyn railroad yards to Madison Square Garden. The circus finally left the Garden in recent years when renovations took away the space needed to house the animals in the basement. The circus moved to the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, where it will have its last shows at the end of February.

The circus's ultimate decline came in recent decades when animal rights activists tried to smear the circus with PR campaigns and lawsuits. Long story short, the most recent lawsuit of alleged inhumane treatment was dismissed is court as frivolous and the animals rights groups had to pay $25 million to the circus in a settlement. But the damage had been done. The public's taste in entertainment involving live animals had dwindled despite the well documented humane care and breeding of the animals used for performances. The dogs used come from rescue situations, and circus owners provide retirement homes for elephants and tigers. In 2016, the elephants left the circus, and you could say that was the final nail in the circus coffin. Feld representatives have said they were surprised how quickly ticket sales fell after the elephants left. Like I said, they always stole the show.

It hit me when I heard a radio interview with a woman who was taking her child to the circus in Miami this past weekend. When asked about the news that the circus was closing, she said she was glad she got to take her son to see the show that she had enjoyed as a child, but she was also happy that "the animals can be free." The animals can be free? What does that mean? Does she think that they are going to let the remaining horses and dogs run wild in Sarasota? Ringling either breeds in captivity or rescues animals for its circus. I'm sad for the 400 cast and crew members who have lost their jobs at the circus. But more so for the animals they have trained, cared for, and given them a job to do, a daily routine of performances that bring joy to millions, and brings them rewards and treats for a job well done. What post-circus life can ever deliver to them this sort of wildly stimulating lifestyle, living closely with their human partners? I hope they can prosper in their forced retirement.

Lisa Peterson - writes about horses, hounds and history at lisanleashed.com - contact her at .lisa@lisaunleashed.com