One day an
out of work
mime is visiting the zoo and attempts to earn
some money as a street performer. 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 the 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 cage 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?"
