WINDHAM — In the hills of Windham—where pasture meets mountain and quiet roads wind past old farms—there was once, improbably, an elephant hunt.
The story, now local legend, traces back to the Vidbel family, whose circus roots ran as deep as the Catskills themselves. Long before their name became synonymous with big-top summers and animal acts, it began with a boy determined to outrun poverty.
Alfred Vidbel, the son of Polish immigrants in Trenton, New Jersey, grew up with little more than grit and a dream. Again and again, he ran away from home, trying to join the circus—only to be returned for being too young and alone. Eventually, his persistence won out. His parents relented, and Alfred left for good, chasing a life beneath canvas tents and bright lights.
Out on the road, Alfred met Joyce, a Catskills farm girl whose life had already been shaped by animals and motion. As a child, her mother went with her by railroad to Nebraska to train at the White Horse Ranch, where she mastered trick riding, Roman riding, and rodeo-style performance. By the time she joined the Ringling Brothers Circus, she was a seasoned performer. There, amid sawdust rings and traveling caravans, she met Alfred.
Together, they built a life—and eventually a circus—around their shared passion for animals.
“They went everywhere,” said Jenny Vidbel, their granddaughter. “All over the country, even into Canada. But crossing the border with all those animals—she said it was always a challenge.”
By 1984, the couple had founded what became known locally as the “Vidbel’s Old Tyme Family Circus”. Summers meant travel, performance, and spectacle. Winters brought them home to Windham, where their animals—horses, elephants, and more—rested on a farm off Mitchell Hollow Road.
Back home, the circus didn’t entirely disappear. Some seasons, a 1,000-seat tent would rise beside Jimmy O’Connor’s bar, filling with locals eager to see a piece of the wider world roll into town.
For Jenny and her twin sister Susan, the circus wasn’t just heritage—it was childhood.
“We still had to go to school,” Jenny recalled. “We lived here during the year. But in the summers, we went on tour.”
Each sister found her place in the show. Jenny followed her grandmother into horsemanship, learning the art of riding and performing atop powerful, moving animals. Susan took to the air.
“Every young girl in the circus learns web production,” Jenny said. “It’s a climb to the top of a rope where the individual hangs upside down at the top of the tent in a death-defying spectacle.”
Life among the animals shaped them as much as the performances did.
“Elephants are really spectacular animals,” Jenny said. “We raised a whole family of them.”
The bond between the children and the herd was profound. Jenny remembers how the lead elephant would guide her and her sister through the group, wrapping her trunk gently around them to keep them safe.
“They were protective,” she said. “Like we were part of them.”
That protectiveness once surfaced in dramatic fashion. When their grandmother Joyce scolded the girls in a field, the elephants misread the situation. They charged in, surrounding Joyce, convinced the children were in danger.
But the most famous story—the one that still echoes through Greene County—belongs to Siam.
Siam, a 4,500-pound Asian elephant, escaped one October in 1957 after being startled by restless horses. She broke free and vanished into the Catskill wilderness, setting off what one magazine famously described as “a safari in the Catskills.”
For 12 days, search parties combed the mountains. Helicopters flew overhead. At one point, even a big-game hunter was brought in. Sightings were rare, fleeting. According to contemporary accounts, Siam traversed rugged terrain, descending nearly 2,000 feet toward Cairo, covering miles through forest and field.
Locals swapped stories as the search unfolded. One man, Jenny recalled with a laugh, claimed he was in his backyard drinking when he saw the elephant run past through the woods.
“He told me he was never going to drink again,” she said.
In the end, Siam was found near the hamlet of Acra—cold, exhausted, but alive. When Alfred approached her, the ordeal ended not with struggle, but recognition.
“She was so tired,” Jenny said. “But when she saw him, she came right home.”
The story left its mark. The road near the Vidbel property would eventually be renamed Siam Road, a quiet nod to the wildest two weeks in Windham’s history.
Today, the circus itself has faded, but the legacy remains in new forms. Jenny Vidbel now runs Vidbel Animal Actors, supplying trained animals for film and stage. Recently, her company provided a sheep for a production by The New Group, appearing in “The Curse of the Starving Class” alongside actors like Christian Slater and Calista Flockhart.
Despite changing times—and shifting attitudes toward animal performance—Jenny is clear about how her family saw their work.
“A lot of people get the wrong idea about the circus and think that all of the animals are mistreated,” she said. “But I tell you that we were raised with these animals like they were our own family, and my grandparents and my parents and myself and my sister loved these animals very much and could not have been more passionate or concerned about their circumstances.”
In Windham, where the mountains hold their stories close, the memory of the Vidbel circus lingers—part myth, part history, and wholly local. A place where, for a brief time, the extraordinary wandered just beyond the tree line, and an elephant could disappear into the woods like something out of a dream.
