14. DOG ENDS

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN…

For Jacob Longlevers it has certainly been a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.

‘If someone had told me eighteen months ago that I would become a lion tamer I would have thought they needed their head examined. But that was before I was selected to be hunted. When that happens it’s like you enter a parallel universe in which everything previously considered improbable becomes the norm. But, unfortunately, the one consistent that transcends worlds is that killer pack of dogs a snapping at your heels. Oh and Rotherham United are still struggling.’

‘What made you take up lion taming?’ we asked.

‘You have to think outside the box,’ Jacob replied somewhat stoically, ‘or you’ll soon find yourself permanently in one, if they can recover enough of you to fill one.’

Jacob Longlevers simply thought of the places hunting hounds would not go in pursuit of their prey and came up with the idea of anywhere near the big cats.

‘When dog owners mention about taking their beloved pets for a walk,’ he explained, ‘it’s always around the local park or playing fields. It’s never around the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya.’

Mr Longlevers upon reaching this conclusion quickly alighted upon a travelling circus visiting his patch of South Yorkshire and impressed upon those in charge his credentials to take up lion taming although it was a dramatic departure from his previous vocation that of being an accountant.’

‘They were a tad sceptical at first but I was able to win them over by telling them that I have diligently protected the assets of numerous clients for years so I fancied the chances of guarding my own in a cage from the big cats.’

Longlevers used his past experience to secure a tax break for the fecal incontinence pants it was necessary to buy in bulk.

‘I was provided with a whip and a sturdy stool to protect me by the circus proprietors, but thereafter, on a personal level, as soon as I stepped into that cage sturdy stools became a thing of the past.’

The hunting hounds follow the circus around and it became necessary for Jacob to live permanently in the cage or face certain death if he steps out of it. But his odds of survival are better remaining with the four lions in front of him that he considers manageable than the ten times that in the shape of the pack of hounds outside.

‘I hate it when circus crowds make disparaging remarks,’ he said with genuine disgust. ‘I must be the only lion tamer in the world who is regularly called a coward.’

It isn’t easy for the middle aged father of four to live permanently in an eighteen foot square cage with four lions. He sleeps by being strapped to the ceiling of his confinement. However, despite all the diligence he employs he has come a cropper twice. On one occasion losing his left arm below the elbow, making it harder to lift the stool now, and on another his entire right foot.

‘On both occasions the severed limbs were then thrown to the hunting hounds baying for my blood outside the cage. It was an unedifying spectacle. It felt like they are devouring me in installments.’

Jacob Longlevers is proud of the fact that unlike a lot of hunt prey he is still earning a living for his family while being hunted. Although he feels sorry for the other circus acts and patrons who have to put up with the inconvenience of the many hounds in situ waiting for the day when he leaves the cage of lions.

‘I feel most embarrassed about Kloopie the Clown,’ he explained, his voice barely carrying through the bars of his confinement. ‘The hounds chewed his slippers to pieces. And they weren’t normal slippers, they had been specially tailored to cater for his size 97 feet.’