To Ride with the Pride of Lions, 1994
Marilyn Cohen
Atlanta, Georgia.
A young man,
dressed as the biblical Daniel,
enters the lion's den.
Three weeks ago,
he was a fork lift driver.
Today, he is a circus man.
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| As a boy, Ted MacRae kept a 9-foot boa constrictor as a pet. Yet little in his past had prepared him for a life in the circus. A Baltimore father of three and the son of civil servants, he was a truck driver by day and a karaoke host and singer by night when a late-night phone call changed his life.
The lion tamer for a new circus wasn't working out. Would Ted like to take his place? When Ted's wife, Renee, admitted she had always loved the circus, he was on the morning flight to Sarasota to be trained by wild animal expert Kay Rosaire. Three weeks later, with Kay standing nearby in the flowing robes of a guardian angel, Ted MacRae entered the ring, a lion tamer.
Now the MacRaes are a circus family and life on the road is a moving adventure. When Dad performs with lions and tigers, Mom assists him in the ring. When he's TM, the Gator Man, performing with crocodiles and alligators in Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus, he's on his own. When son Adrian isn't performing on the unicycle he bought with money he earned as a concessionaire, he's helping Dad in the ring. Brothers Dorian and Jordan, like all children of the circus, got their first taste of applause wearing costumes and waving to the audience in the circus parade.
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