One day an out
of work mime is visiting
the zoo and attempts
to earn some money as a street performer.
Unfortunately, as
soon as he starts to draw a crowd, a zoo keeper grabs
him and
drags him into his office.
The zoo-keeper explains to
the mime that the zoo’s most
popular attraction, a gorilla, has
died suddenly and the
keeper fears that attendance at the zoo will fall
off. He
offers the mime a job to dress up as the gorilla until
they
can get another one. The mime accepts.
So the next
morning the mime puts on the gorilla suit and
enters the cage before
crowd comes. He discovers that it’s a
great job. He can sleep all he
wants, play and make fun of
people and he draws bigger crowds than he
ever did as a mime.
However, eventually the crowds tire of him and
he tires of
just swinging on tires.
He begins to notice
that the people are paying more
attention to the lion in the cag
e next to his. Not wanting to
lose the attention of his audience,
he climbs to the top of
his cage, crawls across a partition, and
dangles from the top
to the lion’s cage. Of course, this makes the lion
furious,
but the crowd loves it. At the end of the day the
zoo-keeper
comes and gives the mime a raise for being such a
good
attraction.
Well, this goes on for some time, the mime keeps
taunting
the lion, the crowds grow larger, and his salary keeps
going
up. Then one terrible day when he is dangling over the
furious lion,
he slips and falls. The mime is terrified. The
lion gathers itself
and prepares to pounce.
The mime is so scared that he begins
to run round and round
the cage with the lion close behind. Finally,
the mime starts
screaming and yelling, „Help, Help me!“ but the lion
is quick
and pounces.
The mime soon finds himself flat
on his back looking up at
the angry lion and the lion says, “
Shut up you idiot! Do you
want to get us both fired?“
