Animals and Thespians 
    [Editor’s note – once again I must add that I’ve seen some of these stories or variations of them outside Vellanoff’s Journal. Where they actually originated is a good question.]

Zoo Animals 
    While playing in the small city of West Burg, Missouri, the parents of our director and his brother, the producer, were killed in an unfortunate gas explosion which leveled half of their New York apartment building. They lived in the wrong half. The brothers left immediately for New York. We were to stay in Missouri until they got back, after which the tour would continue. It was going to be at least ten days. 
    In the first two days we exhausted all the cultural opportunities in West Burg, and I mean all. The last such opportunity was the city zoo. The zoo manager was enamored with the theater, had seen our show, and was still delighted to show us around. 
    When we finished he said, “Ah – folks – you are actors, and the zoo needs a couple actors.” He went on to explain that on occasion the zoo lost an animal due to sickness or death. When that happened they would put someone in an animal costume and put that person in the cage so people could see something. The costumed person was supposed to act as much like the original occupant as possible. That’s where the acting came in. 
    We were flabbergasted as we had never heard of anything like this before. A couple of the younger members of the troupe, Joe and Avery, decided to help this zoo manager and play the part of his now dead gorilla. 
    The first day it went fine. Each in turn would don the gorilla costume and cavort around the gorilla enclosure, trying to act as much like the original occupant as possible. On the second day Joe, who was very athletic and somewhat of an acrobat acted the part so well that he drew a large crowd. While swinging around on some bars and tree limbs in the enclosure he slipped and tumbled into the lion’s den. 
    Joe was petrified. The lion came over, sniffed him, and let out with a weak roar. Joe started screaming for help. The lion pounced on him and said, “Will you shut up, you’re going to get us both fired.”

Mongoose, Mongeese? 
    Like I’ve mentioned before, we had a gentleman who had a number of trained dogs, and together they did an act. It was quite popular. The man, Sam, was always looking for new ways to improve his routine. At one time he tried a couple cats, but they didn’t seem to care if his act was successful or not. They didn’t seem to care what Sam wanted them to do. They didn’t seem to care whether they were even there or not, well---at least until mealtime. Finally, they ended up as sort of decorations in the act, just laying around where the audience could see them. Every once in a while Sam would order them to do something, and their obvious disinterest in complying seemed to give the audience as much pleasure as if they had actually done something. 
    One of Sam’s great ideas was that he needed a couple more animals that could be trained. So he sat down to order a mongoose. Actually, he needed two of the things. So he was filling out the order and asked us how to spell the plural of mongoose. We didn’t know. We tried “Mongooses, mongeese, mongeeses, who knew?” Nothing sounded right. 
    So finally Sam, after waving us off, wrote, “Send me one mongoose and while you’re at it, send me another one.” 

Rex, The Wonder Dog 
    Back to Beth and her dog Rex. One day she arrived at the theater all excited. She showed us an ad in a newspaper. “Learn the IQ of your dog. Send me $4.99 and I will send you my doggy IQ test by return mail.” 
    We laughed at the very idea, but Beth was dead serious. She had always assumed that Rex was very intelligent. So, against our advice, she sent the money and got back the reply.       She came into the theater with Rex in tow, waving an envelope. “It came,” she shouted. “Now we’ll see how smart he really is.” 
    She opened the envelope and read the note inside which said, “I can assume that if you sent me $4.99 for a dog IQ test your dog is smarter than you.” We wanted to laugh, but refrained in deference to her. It was a couple months before she could enjoy the humorous side of that incident.


Danger! Beware of Dog!

During our time playing at the Kentucky Theater, in Hazard, Kentucky, we had a free day so several of were out exploring the area. We came up to a crossroads out in the hills where there was a country store. We needed some lunch so went inside to see what they had. As we climbed up on the porch, we saw this sign, “Danger! Beware the Dog!”

We eased open the door and cautiously entered the store. We spotted a large dog, lying in the middle of the center aisle, looking to be sound asleep. And the dog looked old. As we looked closer we wondered if the thing was even alive.

As we got closer the dog raised its head, thumped its tail on the floor, and went back to sleep.

We asked the owner, “Sir,” and pointing to the sleeping dog asked, “is that the dangerous dog.”

“That is,” answered the owner.

“So why the danger sign?”

“People kept tripping over him.”