“There’s another one! There’s another one!” screamed a little boy at the top of his lungs, popcorn flying violently from the tiny red and white bag he clutched in his hands.

“They’re surrounding us!” said the little boy’s dad.

The boy and his brother were running in frantic circles around two large, green bushes that had approached the family Sunday — on an innocent visit to the Sowebo Arts Festival in southwest Baltimore — and simply crouched down, silently, beside them.

These deciduous characters, walking around on two striped legs, were causing a huge sensation.

“Why are people in bushes?! Why are people in bushes?!” yelled a line of little girls and boys jumping up and down and pointing at the mischievous shrubbery, now perched inconspicuously beside a flower pot, waiting for their next unassuming victim.

Why are people in bushes, indeed?

(Visit the Brew’s full length photo album of Ambush at the Sowebo Arts Festival)

After a mysterious YouTube video of live human beings wandering around in bush costumes surfaced in our Facebook news feed, that’s exactly what the Brew set out to find out.

After extensive research and a series of lengthy interviews, we learned that, in the most basic of terms, the bushes are a very unique group of Baltimore street performers who walk, jump, tease, scare and dance for unassuming pedestrians while dressed as foliage.

In its own words, the group of large plants, officially known as “Ambush Theater,” is “a mobilized posse of shrubbery with a mind of it’s own,” states the group’s website. “Part puppetry, part topiary, part clown, Ambush mixes the overlooked world of shrubbery with the suspense and drama of a low budget thriller. Through carefully choreographed bouts of chaos, Ambush creates an engaging and amusingly unpredictable kinetic landscape.”

Ambush founder and chief bush Annie Howe affectionately describes the bushes as “roving shrubbery bordering on mayhem.”

During this weekend’s Sowebo Festival at Hollins Market, the Brew had the opportunity to see Ambush in action and speak with Howe, a former fabrics major who began Ambush nine years ago while taking a performance class at MICA. Howe made the original three Ambush costumes from a $200 lot of fake philodendron and boxwood leaves she bought on EBay, and has continued to make most of the costumes herself (though some have been constructed by local clothes-maker Edie Sanford).

In addition to a fabric base, under-structured hoop skirt, sparkly shoes, and optional butt-covers, each bush costume also always include a pair of striped-tights in order to make Ambush stand out from the scattering of performing bushes across the country — including the bushes that attend the Virgin Musical festival in Montreal, who mysteriously appeared the year after Virgin hired Ambush to perform at the record label’s Baltimore festival.

Now for the most obvious question of Ambush: Why? Howe, who calls the concept “simple” but effective, says it can be difficult to understand the bushes until you see them with your own eyes. She says she was inspired by the classic old movie scenario of a disguised assailant, a bush, darting behind flower pots and columns to stay out of sight of an unsuspecting target.

To that end, the bushes “interact with people” but are always silent, Howe explains. Though no talking is allowed, the shrubbery find plenty of ways to express themselves, including following unsuspecting pedestrians and making them laugh, performing choreographed dances, shaking the occasional hand, and moving through spaces and stopping and going as a group.

The bushes are “funny” and “not stupid,” said Brashae Rice, a face-painted nine-year-old who was scared by one of the bushes at the Sowebo Arts Festival at Hollins Market this Sunday. It’s a good idea that the bushes are at the festival “because I’ve never been here so I kinda wanna have fun and look at funny stuff,” added Rice.

Other festival-goers’ reactions were equally interesting.

“Here comes a dog. He’s gonna take a leak!” hollered an older gentleman, walking gleefully towards the shrubbery with his canine companion. The bushes quickly stood and changed course, skirting away in opposite directions.

“I’ve never seen nothing like that,” said south Baltimore resident Susan Harris after she snapped a picture of one of the bushes. “That’s a picture for Facebook.”

“Oh yeah that’s wonderful,” said Darrell Brown, the father of the two little boys surrounded by two bushes at once. “Alive and well. Grow. Flourish. That’s entertaining,” he continued. “That’s art…That’s art, imitating life, imitating art…That’s creative genius.”

Though Howe is the only 100 percent consistent member, she is joined by a dedicated revolving cast of bushes for the various festivals, corporate events, and parties where Ambush typically performs, including local performers Lizzie Lyra, Kesling Kalb, Kristen Faber, Monica Chemay, and last but not least, “Paco Fish,” a local performance artist who when not performing burlesque or dressing up as a bush, maintains a 9-5 job day job as a cytogenetics technologist at the University of Maryland (Not to readers: Ambush is always in the market for new bushes).

Howe also holds a full time job as a staff artist for non-profit Nana Projects, where she walks on stilts and designs and directs the Halloween lantern parade in Patterson Park.

“We love doing stuff for people. we’re kind of open to anything,” Howe said of Ambush’s enthusiasm for street strolling. In addition to the sheer enjoyment of interacting with their environment, the roving shrubs are rewarded handsomely for their hijinks. Each makes $100-150 an hour per performer, the “going rate for strolling performers,” said Howe, who made a point to say that they will accept less for events they like or that are hosted by non-profit orgs.

Next up on Ambush’ agenda? This weekend they will be livening up the Crohn’s and Colitis walk in Federal Hill. They are also scheduled to attend six of eight Strathmore outdoor music concerts in June and July.

The Ambush bushes have been following distracted couples in love,teasing jovial parents, and high-fiving delighted tots for nine years, so how is it possible that they’ve maintained such a low profile until now?

“Because,” explained Howe, “we blend in.”