One day a mime is visiting the zoo and attempts to earn some money as a street performer. As soon as he starts to draw a crowd, the zoo keeper grabs him and drags him into his office.

The zoo keeper explains to the mime that the zoo's most popular attraction, a gorilla, died suddenly and the keeper fears that attendance at the zoo will fall off. He offers the mime a job to dress up as the gorilla until they can get another one. The mime accepts.

So the next morning before the crowd arrives the mime puts on the gorilla suit and enters the cage. He discovers that it's a great job. He can sleep all he wants, play and make fun of people and he draws larger crowds than he ever did as a mime on the street.

However, eventually the crowd tires of him and he tires of just swinging on auto tires. He notices that the people are paying more attention to the lion in the next cage. Not wanting to lose the attention of his audience, he climbs to the top of his cage, crawls across a partition, and dangles from the top of the lion's cage. Of course, this makes the lion furious, but the crowd loves it. At the end of the day the zoo keeper comes and gives the mime a raise for being such a good attraction.

Well, this goes on for some time, the mime keeps taunting the lion, the crowd grows larger, and his salary keeps going up.

Then one day when he is dangling over the top of the lion's cage, he slips and falls. The mime is terrified. The lion raises himself up and prepares to pounce. The mime is so scared that he begins to run around the cage with the lion in hot pursuit.

Finally, the mime starts screaming and yelling, "Help! Help me!"

The lion is quick and pounces. The mime soon finds himself flat on his back looking up at the angry lion.

The lion says, "Shut up you idiot or we'll both lose our jobs!"