Tuesday, May 28, 2013

More on Exotic Animal Acts!


This is John's mixed act on the Gil Gray show in the 1950's.
He told me an amusing story about the time he was training another act like this at Baraboo.
The closing trick was supposed to be the two camels cushed down as seen above, while a guanaco circled the ring and leaped over them.
However  after getting up a head of steam, the guanaco, at the last second, would drop down like a runner sliding into home plate and assume the cushed position beside the two camels.
In frustration John ordered one of his grooms, an older gentleman, to lay on his back close to the camel and hold up a whip.
"But Mr. Herriott, I'm afraid he might step on me!....."No damn it, lay down there, he won't step on you!.
Around the ring he goes again and this time dives right on top of the groom and won't budge........pandemonium strikes the practice ring....camels bawling.....guanocos spitting.....the groom yelling in agony while Johnny and Frankie Braun try to drag the guanoco off the top of him!
Later after picking him up and brushing him off Jonn said those immortal words so often used by animal trainers, "See if you had done what I told you in the first place, this wouldn't have happened!"



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's wonderful things like this that make my day.

Gentlemen: God bless you.

Paul

Chic Silber said...


What's the difference between the

Guanaco & the Vicuna (if any) & are

they close relatives of the Llamas

John Herriott said...

The guanacuo is very close to Llamas and they have interbred over the years so that it is hard to tell whivch is which. However pure guanacuos bare always light brown with white points, legs ,chest,etc. and guanacuos get only a nice wooly exterior, whereby Llamas are multicolored and get a very furry body. Vicunos are totally different with smaller bodies and large heads. Gunacuos are quicker and easily jump,etc. Hard to see real pure guanacuos anymore. Zoos seem to put llamas i9n compounds together and they easily interbred. lLAMAS ARE LAZIER THAN GUANOCUOS. gOOD QUESTION cHIC. vICUNOS ARE VALUED FOR THEIR WOOL.

John Herriott said...

p.s. Chic; The photo above are Guanacuos. AsI stated they are excellent jumpers. I have always had jumping llamas or Gunacuos in my exotic acts, but rarely do we see that anymore, That is why I always trained the jump over the rest of the cushed animals. The show guy grooms and bullhands over the years always referred to gunacuos as "Canackies". As stated, vicunos are valued for their wool and are quite stupid and harder to train.

Now an interesting llama story for the blog readers. Chappie Fox, CWM directer and my boss and dear friend during my years at CWM was a very knowledgable authority on wild life, flora a fona, horses, trains, circus and carnival equip, etc. So nwhen I was training an exotic there with a llama he was quite interested and called me on my phone in the barn. Now we know that llamas spit as a defense so he said to me, quote,"you know John when they spit it bis a form of regergutation "[however I spell it] and asked if the llama was spitting in training. I suggested for sure and that I wore coveralls and sunglasses in training. He said, "Well bear in mind that they can only spit about three times and then their stomach is empty". Just so YI would know. Later in the day I called him and told him that during that days training the llama had spit on me about 17 times in one session. Case closed. He and I had a big laugh. When they spit it is a green matter that stinks like hell. Once they are trained the forget it unless they have some reason for defense.johnny

Chic Silber said...


Thanks John as always your stories

& anecdotes are great fun but from

Buckles original note it seems that

aside from being great at jumping

Guanacos also make good sliders

Chic Silber said...


The 1st I recall ever hearing of

Guancos was in Roger Boyd's Side

Show pitch on the Beatty Show even

though we didn't have any

For no good reason I could still

repeat his words verbatim today

Dick Flint said...

Great story, John! Especially interesting that they spit in training but generally not once the act is working. I would have thought Chappie was going to express concern about the audience!
By the way, besides tigers pissing are there any other animals (besides camels) that can do similar damage to the audience? Any good stories? I once heard s story that there was a trainer who could get his pickout pony to piss on command (supposedly part of a comedy act)!
What happens to the jumping ability of an inbred llama and quanacuo?
Dick Flint
Baltimore

Vincent Manero said...

Very interesting comments. Thanks for sharing!