Why lion tamers wield chairs (and cat owners don’t)
This column was originally published May 29, 2002:
I made the mistake Sunday morning of coming into the office just to do one little thing and then I compounded the mistake by stopping to read the mail and listen to my messages, which included today's question.
And so then I started thinking about today's question and pondering it and considering it and generally ruminating upon it and decided I'd just take a quick stab at finding the answer and ended up being half an hour late to church and had to sit way in the back, which really isn't so bad because when you sit way in the back you can visit with your neighbor and also there are fewer people to notice that you were pretending to be tying your shoe when the collection plate went past.
This is the question: In the old movies and the circus the lion tamer always carried a whip and a gun and a chair. Why a chair?
The answer came from a documentary that came out a few years ago and that I'd forgotten about or at least about the lion-tamer part. It was called “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control” and was very good except for the part about the naked mole rats, which really creeped me out.
The movie included an interview with Dave Hoover, who was a newspaper executive in Ohio before he decided to become a famous lion tamer. In the movie, Hoover says this:
"Lions are very single-minded. When you point the four legs of a chair at them, they get confused. They don't know where to look, and they lose their train of thought."
This sounds reasonable, especially if the lion's train of thought was about to pull into the eat-the-lion-tamer station.
I could try the chair thing on my masters, but I don't think I need to. Little bells and shiny beads are usually enough to distract them.
I did test it out on my cat, but it just gave me one of those looks they give you and walked off.
Maybe I'll try it on Sunday on the guy with the collection plate.