One day an out of work mime was visiting the zoo, where he attempted to earn some money as a street performer. Unfortunately, as soon as he started to draw a crowd, a zoo keeper grabbed him and dragged him into his office.
The zookeeper explained to the mime that the zoo's most popular attraction, a gorilla named Sparky, had died suddenly and the keeper was worried that attendance at the zoo would fall off without him. The zookeeper offered the mime a job to dress up as Sparky until they could get a new gorilla. The mime accepted.
The next morning, the mime put on a gorilla suit and entered the cage before the crowd arrived. He discovered that it was a great job! He could sleep all he wanted, play and make fun of people and he was drawing bigger crowds than he ever did as a mime.
However, eventually the crowds tired of him, and he was getting bored just swinging on tires. He began to notice that the people were paying more attention to the lion in the cage next to his. Not wanting to lose the attention of his audience, he climbed to the top of his cage, crawled across a partition, and dangled from the top over the lion's cage. Of course, this made the lion furious, but the crowd loved it. At the end of the day the zoo keeper was thrilled, and even gave the mime a raise for being such a good attraction.
This went on for some time, the mime kept taunting the lion, the crowds grew larger, and his salary kept going up. Then one terrible day when he was dangling over the furious lion, he lost his grip and fell. The mime was terrified. The lion gathered itself and prepared to pounce. The mime was so scared that he began to run round and round the cage with the lion close behind. When no help came, and the crowd looked on in shock, the mime started screaming and yelling.
Help, Help me!" he screamed, but the lion was too quick and pounced. The mime found himself flat on his back looking up at the angry lion, who was just inches away from his face when he whispered, "Shut up you idiot! Do you want to get us both fired?