For those of you who visit DCA, there are a few of these type "characters" there, also. When I saw them, one was a vine, the other a flower, but you had to be about 3 inches away to see the faces, they were not on stilts and had much more diguise vines/leaves around their faces, and the make up matched.
A little odd, they did chase a few people, and startle a few, too.