It was the only day of the year on which barking would be tolerated at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, and the dogs took full advantage of this opportunity.
In the packed sanctuary, one dog began to bark and dozens of others followed suit, filling the room with a cacophony of yelps as the Reverend James Kowalski delivered his sermon.
The cats remained silent, perhaps intimidated by the raucous canines.
In the parking lot, a menagerie of more unusual animals turned the asphalt into a temporary playground. Among their ranks were a camel, two llamas, a yak, a tortoise, a wallaby, a monkey, a fox, a golden eagle, a falcon, and a caribou reindeer, their necks festooned with wreaths.
“It’s a celebration of creation and the community spirit,” Patti Welch, chaplain at the cathedral’s school and canon for education, said of the event, the 24th annual Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, a saint “whose life exemplified harmony between humans and nature,” according to a press release from the church.
“Both of us saw a yak for the first time!” said a woman named Anna, who was accompanied by her husband and infant daughter. She called that the highlight of the day, but that was before she noticed the monkey.
“That might become my favorite part,” she said, pursing her lips as she considered the choice.
“Anna, Alex, turn around so I can get a picture of you and a camel!” her husband said, pointing to the largest creature in the parking lot.
“How do you ride it?” one boy asked his father, pointing to the camel.
“Very carefully!” his father replied.
When it came to the yak, the boy knew exactly where his priorities stood.
“Can I pet it?” he asked. Then, a minute later: “What is it?”
The yak declined to be interviewed.
Another father, Dale, said he and his family had wanted to come to the Feast for years.
“We’ve been talking about it, but every year it seemed like you couldn’t get in,” he said. “I think some years are busier than this.”
Church officials confirmed that there were fewer exotic animals this year, due in part to the construction that has limited the available cathedral space.
“We’ve been coming every year for over a decade,” Michael Leon said of himself and a group of students from the Green Chimneys School in Brewster, N.Y., which has a “therapeutic farm program” for its special needs students and brought its animals for the event.
“We have a pretty fun collection of critters,” Leon said of the school’s furry entourage, which included two llamas.
A reporter approached, and one of the llamas leaned in to sniff his face.
“Give kiss,” Leon instructed. “Really! Give kiss.”
The llama obeyed, licking the reporter’s chin.
After a couple hours in the parking lot, men, women, and children dressed in white robes with dark green rope belts gathered the animals into a single-file procession.
Asked how the order of the procession was determined, Welch said quite seriously, “We do it by who’s not going to eat the other ones.”
The llamas caused trouble in the procession, which wound across the parking lot and up the long set of steps to the cathedral doors. A few minutes later, Leon reappeared with the llamas and led them through a side door.
“They don’t do stairs. I didn’t know they were going to make us do stairs this year,” he said, slightly disgruntled.
Once all the animals had entered the sanctuary, they proceeded to the front, where they stood as the choir swelled and incense burned. Women in flowing white dresses danced onstage, while others flounced down the aisle waving brightly colored flags. Afterward, the animals made their way outside, where they were blessed on the Amsterdam Avenue sidewalk to the confusion and delight of passersby.
“If you told your friends you saw a camel walking around New York, they’d never believe you,” a grandmotherly woman across the street said to a child.
Behind them, a young man walked by with his cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Man, there’s all these animals out here,” he said. “A camel just walked into the church!”
maggie.astor@columbiaspectator.com
