We realize that many of you are not fans of the elephant march that wound its way through the streets of Washington yesterday. (We’re not passing judgment either way — we just feel an obligation to inform people when a large group of pachyderms begin stomping around Capitol Hill.) But don’t you worry: PETA stands ready to strike back. According to one government source we spoke with, PETA had actually asked the D.C. government to shut down yesterday’s march, but it was too late. Instead, the animal rights group will “confront circusgoers” with a “giant, inflatable ‘elephant'” that “will lead PETA’s contingent of nearly 100 protesters” tomorrow morning.

“Washingtonians would run screaming from the big top if they knew that elephants used by Ringling suffer a lifetime of abuse,” said PETA Director Delcianna Winders in a press release sent this morning. “As infants, they’re torn away from their mothers and beaten into submission—and older, arthritic elephants…are still forced to perform painful contortions despite their ill health.”

Aside from the blow-up Dumbo, PETA will also be utilizing their usual shock and awe tactics, like showing people entering the Verizon Center photos of “baby elephants [being] stretched out, slammed to the ground, gouged with steel-tipped bullhooks, and shocked with electric prods.”

In somewhat related news, I’m about to vigorously petition my bosses to spring for this bad boy to “confront” DCist readers during our Servathon project.