AURELIUS - Thrills, laughter and excitement came somersaulting into the county when the Cole Brothers Circus of the Stars opened in the big tent outside the Fingerlakes Mall. And the performers were thrilled to be there.

Elmo Gibb, man of a 1,000 faces, most of them clowns, explained: “I've been in the circus 30 years. First of all, I get antsy if I sit in one place (city) too long. It's different when you're in the circus. The audience performs for us - we have to be on stage. There's no other feeling like it in the world.”

And the circus performers thrilled the crowds Monday.

The aerial team of Blaze Birge and David Jones took the stage - and turns - upside down, hanging by a swing, with hands and feet hooked together, turning over and over like a pair of paper clips.

Spiderman, running like a hamster in a steel wheel which swung around on a long steel arm to the tent's high depths, received screaming applause. And just when you thought he was through, he decided to run along the outside of the wheel, and skip rope.

A small blond-haired boy quietly walked along the bench seat to stare in wonderment at Gibb. Gibb turned, his clown eyes meeting the little boy's. Then, without warning, Jaden Foresman, 2, of Auburn, raised his hand for a high five. Settled back next to dad, just below, he took a kernel of corn and handed it to Gibb, who promptly took it and put into his own left ear.

“Tell him you're not supposed to put it in your ear, in your mouth,” dad told Jaden.

Jaden did not know whether to laugh until he handed the clown another kernel, and Gibb did it again. Jeffrey, his dad, giggled along with him.

“You have to watch the parents,” Gibb said, referring affectionately to the father and son. “One of the two places adults are allowed to act goofy around their families are at the circus, and on the beach.”

Watching eight acrobats ascend ropes, like strings of spaghetti sipping up to chairs circling high around the ring, Gibb, before having to leave to perform his famous pony team act, talked a little about circus life.

“Something that's always been a constant in the circus are circus families,” Gibb said. “You see that child driving (a circus car in the ring during a poodle performance), he's 13. Small children, as soon as they are able, have a tremendous amount of attention, and responsibility. They probably get twice as much attention as normal children. Circus families have an incredible low rate of divorces.”

Acrobat artist Andrey Medros, of Brazil, started performing when he was 6, 22 years ago. His family goes back four generations as circus performers, he said, although his father is a lawyer. Medros met his wife Victoria, of Bulgaria, who also is an acrobat, in the circus. They got married under the big tent. One of his wedding presents was a high-wire bicycle. He won't touch it, since the couple now has a 3-month-old son, Christopher.

Such was not always the case.

“It's too dangerous. I have more responsibility,” he said, explaining he fell 40 feet last year, doing the Russian Swing, and dislocated his left elbow, which still hurts.

“I was doing a double somersault, flying up 50 feet. I missed. I go too much to the left. I could see the swing and I was too much to the left. I should have went to the net, but I tried to catch. There's an old saying in the circus about getting too sure of yourself. The public push you. You want to do something incredible.”

Medros remembers getting up, receiving applause, then waking up in the hospital.

Next year, he plans to start Christopher in the circus but safely. Especially, now with a family, he and his wife worry.

“Every show, before, we ask for God to give us protection,” he said.