People

By Richard Lacayo

There's one born every minute--and it's not a unicorn. At each performance of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, now appearing in New York City, the crowd is introduced to a coiffed beast with a single horn. The ringmaster calls him a living unicorn. Last week the ASPCA called him a surgical mutilation. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture called him a goat. But the horn, experts conceded, is his own. It apparently was produced at birth by surgically manipulating the two natural horn buds to the center of his head. A press inquiry to the ASPCA kicked up all the investigating last week, and in the finest tradition of the circus barker, Ringling Bros. turned all the base accusations to gold. "Those who would see only a goat," said Circus President Kenneth Feld, "are missing the magical experience of those who instead see a living unicorn." Admitting that business has been hoist on the caprine canard, Feld added, "P.T. Barnum would have been proud."