SHOWMAN’S MISFORTUNE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4993, 28 June 1926, Page 4

SHOWMAN’S MISFORTUNE

ANCIENT ALLIGATOR DIES;

FOLLOWING TWO OTHER DEATHS

The lot of .a travelling showman is sometimes a precarious! one, and when his exhibits a,re live animals whose commercial peculiarities result in their removal to climes hitherto unknown to them, he is quite likely to encounter misfortune.

A showman at present visiting the Manawatu winter fixture has fallen upon evil times. Yesterday morning (states Friday’s Dominion) his large alligator, which commenced its life in Florida, South America, one hundred years ago, quietly closed its wrinkled eyes and departed unto the limbo of its fathers. They prodded its horny s'ides ajid pulled at its sweeping tail, but, as a commercial asset to man, the animal had ceased to function.

A reporter inspected the carcase, mouth of which was now propped open with a splat of wood. How had the. a.nimal died ? “Oh, he just turned it in,” said the showman, dolefully. It had cost him £l2O, he said, and lie. had experienced some difficulty in introducing it into New Zealand, in which country it was the only specimen of its kind. It had only been on tour with the showman for six months when the exceptional coldness of Palmerston North’s weather wrote finis to its chapter.

The showman threw a peanut affectionately a.t a kangaroo which moved sluggishly about the enclosure. “That chap doesn’t look too sprightly himself this, morning,” he 'remarked. Further conversation revealed the fact that the passing of the alligator was only an event In a-sequence of misfortunes. Eight weeks ago the more robust of the two kangaroos, which constituted the Australian section of the showman’s exhibit, had maliciously jumped upon the neck of his seven-months-old companion, and the youngster had departed the.nce. In substantiation of his fearfulness, the victor ravenously attacked a packet of four-inch nails. “And then,” continued .the showman, “at Auckland, just about the same time, as somebody put a bullet into the ’gator’s shoulder —it didn’t even disturb his' digestion —my orangoutang died- This will be my last appearance here with what I have left,” he concluded.

Before he goes the soil of Palmerston North will receive the dead body of the. visitor from 'ancient Florida. But a showmaii is a showman, and he is coming back next year with a monkey show.