In captivity; tigers in Times Square.(animal rights demonstration)(The Talk of the Town)

"Is that legal?" Dennis, from Brooklyn, asked. He was standing on a traffic triangle in the middle of Times Square, next to a policeman. It was just past noon. In front of them, two nearly naked women were kneeling in a pair of small metal cages, holding signs that read, "Wild Animals Don't Belong Behind Bars." As it happens, cops in Shreveport, Louisiana, encountered a similar scenario last spring and concluded that no, it was not legal to impersonate an animal while nearly naked. But in Times Square, even post-Giuliani, traffic flow trumps decency, and the officer's answer to Dennis was a blithe command: "Keep it moving, please!"

The women -- Kayla Worden, tall and blond, and Brandi Valladolid, a petite brunette -- were made up to look like tigers, or the nearly naked human version of tigers, which requires body paint, a bikini bottom, Mickey Mouse ears, a brown nose, and drawn-on whiskers, but no fur. Fur might have helped, given that the temperature was below forty and rain was pouring down. But fur was out of the question, since this stunt was staged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, to protest the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which had come to town that day. ("We'd rather bare skin than wear skin" is a PETA slogan.) Betsy Thomson, a PETA volunteer, held an umbrella over Valladolid's cage and said, "All living things have a right to live without being harmed, tortured, and violated." Beneath her, Valladolid was squirming and shivering. "I'm, like,soaking right now," she said. Dennis, meanwhile, was on his cell phone: "Yo, they got some crazy shit back here. Two naked ladies in cages, man."

A tourist from Philadelphia, in town to see "Phantom of the Opera," stepped up to take a photograph. "You know, looking through this wire, this is how circus animals see the world," Worden said.

Down at Madison Square Garden, the real Ringling ...