| "I have found the male lion beauty regimine- once per week- of a good hose down with a bucket of Johnson's Baby Shampoo (No More Tears Formula) followed by pine shavings for the first dry, clean out the damp shavings, then a fan for the finishing drying touches and fluff keeps them looking lovely at all times during the warm season, regardless of ring condition. No, nobody ever caught a cold." |
Thursday, October 11, 2007
From Mike Naughton
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14 comments:
That's a great picture Pat - love the tail hanging out the back! For sure it was a permanent installation - those old tubs are anything but portable! cc
It IS a great photo, but thank Mike Naughton for sending it in! I agree that tub probably weighed a lot, these days a galvanized Farm 'n' Fleet stock tank would make more sense. Personally, I haven't done the hand-scrubby-massage part on a lion- I just let the water stream do all the work! There's a real sense of satisfaction during the final rinse when what looks like chocolate syrup runs out of his mane, and you know he's clean as a whistle.
We used to hose down Hoover's tigers and let them stay in the sun as much as possible to deepen their "orange."
:-)
Cindy Potter
P.S.
Could someone identify the Bath-er and the Bath-ee?
:-)
Cindy Potter
Cindy, there's no question tigers usually enjoy their baths more than lions! I've never heard that the sun would 'deepen their orange'... is that true? Maybe it has something to do with good general health improving pigment production? (I just made that up.)
Here in Australia I've found that exposure to direct sunlight actually lightens the orange colour of my tigers.
Steve Robinson
Mr. Robinson, you are correct. I have also found that exposure to the sun lightens a tiger's hair coat. I suspect that Dave putting the cat's in the sun after washing , may have been an effort to dry them quicker, and the response that it "deepen's their orange", may have been a patch answer to people wanting to know why they were out in the hot sun. That "chocolate syrup" substance you mention, Pat, tend's to run onto the belly mane, and there it become's hard to remove, forming the dreaded dreadlock's. Wade Burck
Well, we used to wash them down as often as we had water available and put them in the sun, and Hoovers cats always looked good...of course his cage hands were the BEST...
(did I say that???)
:-)
Cindy Potter
If you found that the 'chocolate syrup' ran down on the belly mane and made dreadlocks, you didn't rinse long enough.
Back at Circus World, Jewell News lions all got kind of a mange that was making parts of their manes to fall out and also spots on their bodies to loose hair. Vet brought us a gal of lime and sulphur to mix in a sprayer and soak them down and the cages then let it dry on them and wash it all off the next day. I started to work but smelled like rotten eggs and of course we fed milk and eggs on Sundays so we had to clean the scoures the next day!
CINDY: It's Mel Koontz and one of his Jackie lions. Looks like the pair are getting set for a day of movie-making.
The setting is alongside one of our cagelines. The panels you see outside were covers between the cages, the floors of which were three feet above the gound on pier-and-beam understructure. Later, these panels were replaced by stucco walls along the fronts.
Roger, you mention "covers between the cages", which "later became stucco wall's". What was the purpose of the wall's? I was going to ask you another question a couple of day's ago, so I'll proceed now. Acouple of day's ago ther was an old picture of a trainer in the cage with a number of tigers. In his hand was a "fork". I have seen a number of act's from Europe with that type of fork, and I have seen a couple of act's here in the States with what look's like a hay fork with the tines cut down. I alway's thought a fork was for feeding meat, but I have seen them propped inside the arena wall. I have never used a fork, or seen one being used. What would be it's purpose in the arena, and how would you use it? It seem pretty clumsy and unwieldy. Best wishes to you and Kim, Wade Burck
Roger, I just checked, and it is picture 10290 that I am refering to. One more thing, Pat Anthony told me one time about cages being lined up to an arena at Thousand Oaks, in a, I think I understood right, North, South, East, West direction, if that makes sense. That way 4 act's could use the same arena, was it's purpose, as I understand. Could you elaborate, please. Thank's Wade Burck
WADE: The old cageline bottoms were made of wood just to cover the open space beneath. The pier-and-beam structure allowed the cage floors to dry from beneath. This allowed for a lot of potential storage beneath each cageline, but we never placed anything there because of the few places there would be leaks. Two schools of thought operated there. When I first arrived, I continued scraping out, then shifting animals over to enter empty cages with a hose and scrub brush. Mabel, on the other hand, always dry-cleaned. We'd shift her tigers over, and go through two at a time sweeping the oaken floors clean with warehouse brooms, several of which I've kept. Over time, these clapboard covers were either removed, or covered with a stucco effect and painted what I called a sort of lion-piss ochre.
We had a few of those wooden forks around the place. I was told they came in with some of the Europeans, but nobody over here liked them. One had a shaft 2" thick, making it hard to grip, and 5' long. The fork end was carefully cut out of wood, and attached so that a knob protruded in the center--supposedly to fend off an attacking animal. These things were very unwieldy. Our meat forks were shop-made of steel for feeding only, and were never placed inside the arena. For defense, we relied on Hope sticks, the kitchen chair, and the assured presence of our Guardian Angel, Benny Bennett.
At the Big Stage Arena, my old string ran North toward Thousand Oaks Blvd., and had 12 cages. The Long String ran toward the Ventura Freeway and had 16 cages. Ten cages, the old Gut String, later the Leopard String, ran West to East. It was separated by an arch, through which we walked to the slaughterhouse for our meat. But under this walkway was an underground tunnel, topped with screen, through which leopards and pumas were run, coming up into the tunnel behind the Long String for channelling into the arena. Whatever the number of animals in an act, all could be shifted into the back tunnels for the shows. Once I get the scanner working, I'll offer a few photos for posting to better illustrate our set-up. I still have the original drawing I made for Phil Hyde, but it is too large to scan.
In no time, I wound up with all 38 cages around the arena, plus 15 lionesses in back, Mabel's 10 tigers when Bennett wasn't there, and various retired cats until for about a year I had 72 cats to care for daily. As I've said many times, I never got enough of it.
Forgive the delay in getting an answer to this. Jethro Tull and Pat Benatar kept me hopping last week.
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