UNFORTUNATE SHOWMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1926, Page 17

UNFORTUNATE SHOWMAN.

ANCIENT ALLIGATOR DIES. TWO OTHER DEATHS. The lot of the travelling showman is ecmetimes a precarious one, and when , jjis exhibits are live animals whose | commercial peculiarities result in their removal to climes hitherto unknown to them, he is quite likely to encounter! misfortune, says the Palmerston North j correspondent 'of the '"Dominion." | A showman at present visiting th.! Jlanawatu winter fixture has fallen upon evil times. Yesterday morning his larcre alligator., which commenced its. life"in Florida, North America, one bun- j drecl years ago. quietly closed its wrinkled eve* and departed unto the; Umbo of its fathers. They prodded its; horny sides and pulled at its sweeping ; tail "but, as a commercial asset to man, I the'animal had ceased to function. ; A reporter inspected the carcase, the ; mouth of which was now propped open with a splat of wood. How had the animal died? •'Oh, he just turned it in,"' said the showman, dolefully. It had cost him £120, he said, and he 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 at a kangaroo which moved sluggishly about the enclosure. "That chap doesn't look too sprightly himself this morning," he remarked. | Further conversation revealed the f e.ct I 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 thence. In substantiation of his tearfulness, 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 orang-outang died. This will be my last appearance here with what I have left,'' he concluded. Before lie goes, the soil of Palmerston North will receive the dead* body of the visitor from ancient Florida. But a showman is a showman, and he is coming back next year with a monkey show.