Lions on the Streets?

Panic has followed the arrival of Firch’s Circus in the quiet market town of Crapchhester, with reports of wild animals loose on the streets even before the first performance. “First thing I knew about it was when this bloke came running through the park where the Big Top was pitched shouting ‘The lions are loose, the lions are loose, run for you lives!’, before frenziedly climbing a tree,” local resident Arnold Proon told the Crapchester Chronicle. “He looked absolutely terrified! All of his shouting and screaming, of course, started a panic – suddenly people were running left, right and centre, trying to find somewhere safe to hide. There were joggers climbing on the roof of the bandstand and dog walkers scaling the perimeter walls, dragging their dogs behind on their leads – I saw at least two terriers strangled by their collars as they were hauled up after their owners!” But Proon refused to panic. “It was bloody ridiculous – the circus was one of those animal free ones,” he told the local newspaper. “It’s woke gone mad, if you ask me. Everybody knows those animals enjoyed it all – the travel, the chance to show off their skills – but now those bloody animal rights do-gooders are saying it’s cruel getting them to perform like that. What utter bollocks! Anyway, regardless of that, it meant that there couldn’t be any bloody lions on the loose, could there? I mean, I’d already had a look at this excuse of a circus – just a big tent with a few caravans parked round the back. No cages, no animals.” The sixty two year old gardener, however, was to have a shock when he walked over to the circus to investigate. “There was no-one in the box office, so I went round the back, “ he explains. “There they were, sat on folding chairs, fags in their mouths, opened cans of beer beside them, two bloody lions playing cards at a folding table!”

Police responding to Proon’s call – made from the top of the climbing frame in the nearby children’s playground – found no evidence of animals either at the circus or in the surrounding park, with a spokesperson re-iterating that it was an animal-free circus and putting the whole incident down to mass hysteria. “I know what I saw,” says a disgruntled Proon, who found himself strip searched by police, who suspected him of being high on hallucinogenic drugs. “There were bloody lions there – not even in cages, but sitting around drinking beer and playing cards!” Nevertheless, Proon’s claims seemed to vindicated later that day when, after the circus’ first performance, the local RSPCA office was inundated with complaints of animal cruelty, alleging that the performance had included a gorilla fighting a bear, several seals performing on the trapeze, an elephant high wire act and a knife throwing act involving a monkey on horseback hurling knives at a scantily clad female assistant. “They seemed to think that I was winding them up, or drunk,” Arthur Cobblas, one of the first to call, told the Crapchester Chronicle. “But I saw it with my own eyes – even that elephant on the high wire. Admittedly, it wasn’t a very big elephant, but he did walk along the tightrope, with a balancing pole in his trunk and halfway through, he sat on a chair thrown up to him by the ringmaster! I mean, that sort of thing has to be animal cruelty, hasn’t it?”

Hugh Gretchin, who was at the same performance, also couldn’t believe what he was seeing and called the RSPCA. “That gorilla versus bear fight – it was appalling, they were going at it hammer and tongs! Biting and punching each other!” he says. “I couldn’t look it was so brutal – especially when it looked like the gorilla was getting the upper hand as I’d bet the bloke sitting beside me ten quid that the bear would win easily.” Despite the volume of calls, the claims seemed so incredible that the RSPCA, suspecting some kind of prank, decided not to send out an inspector. The matter came to a head the next day when the police were called to a shooting incident at a local pub. “I’m telling you, these two bloody lions strolled in here and tried to order beer, when I refused to serve them, the furry bastards started getting leery with me,” Jim Hableaux, landlord of the ‘Ruptured Pig’ later told local journalists. “So I got the shotgun out from under the bar – I always keep one there because some of the lads who come in here can get a bit rowdy after a few alcopops – at which point they started trying to leg it out of the door, so I let them have both barrels as they went!” Hableaux was later charged with firearms offences and attempted murder, after it transpired that the ‘lions’ were, in fact, circus employees in lion costumes. “I thought it was a bit funny that they came in walking on two legs,” concedes Hableaux. “But rules are rules and animals aren’t allowed in the lounge bar. If they’d come in the public bar, then fair enough, I’d have served them.”

Luckily, Hableaux’s shotgun was only loaded with birdshot, most of which ended up in the buttocks of the two lion impersonators. The circus’, owner, Ron Firch, though, is still furious. “This is a town of bloody lunatics,” he opines. “We’ve never had this sort of trouble before. What’s wrong with these idiots in Crapchester that they can’t tell the sodding difference between people in costumes and real animals?” Firch explains that with circuses now unable to use real animals, his operation has been forced to use fake animals instead. “The lack of animals has been absolutely killing the circus business,” he says. “Without them, what are we left with? Trapeze artists, high wire acts and, well, more trapeze artists, that’s what! Nobody likes bloody trapeze artists – they all do the same sodding routine and we know they won’t get hurt because of the net health and safety insist we use! It’s them and the clowns and frankly, I hate clowns. I don’t think they are creepy, mind. They just aren’t funny. There are only so many times you can see someone kicked in the arse, have a pie thrown in their face, tripped over or have a bucket of water thrown over them before it ceases to be amusing.”

The solution, Hableaux claims, was to create fake animals. “Things like the lions, gorillas, bears, even horses weren’t a problem. Even the knife throwing monkey is actually a dwarf in a suit,” he says. “The elephants were a bit trickier – we ended up needing at least four people in the suit, two pairs for the legs, with the others on their shoulders to do stuff like operate the tail, ears and trunk. But he end results were worth it.” The use of fake animals means that the circus can present ever more bizarre animal acts to meet the demands of thrill seeking audiences. “We can have animal knife fights, elephants on the tightrope and stuff, yet still be able to say in all honesty that no animals were harmed,” he observes. “There are some disadvantages, mind – the guys in lion and tiger suits are great, but unlike real big cats they can’t open their mouths wide enough for their trainer to stick his head between their jaws. Instead, he just has to stick his todger in there. Not quite the same, but still a thrill for the audience.”