One day, an out-of-work man is visiting the zoo. Thinking that he's got nothing to lose, he attempts to earn some money as a street performer.
However, as soon as he starts to draw a crowd, one of the zookeepers grabs him and drags him into his office.
The zookeeper explains to the man that the zoo’s most popular attraction, a gorilla, has died suddenly. The keeper fears that attendance at the zoo will drop, and they will lose money. He offers the man a job to dress up in a gorilla suit and pretend to be the animal until they can get another one. The man accepts.
The next morning, before the crowd arrives, the man puts on a gorilla suit and enters the cage. He soon discovers that it’s a great job. He can sleep and eat all the bananas he wants, act like a fool, and make fun of people without any fear of repercussions; plus, he makes a lot more money than he ever did at his old job.
However, eventually the crowds tire of him, and he gets bored just swinging on tires and eating bananas all day. He also begins to notice that the people are paying more attention to whatever is in the cage next to his.
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 to the other cage. Looking down, he sees an angry tiger leaping and snarling at him. The crowd loves it.
Well, this goes on for some time. The man keeps taunting the tiger, the crowds grow larger, and the man's salary keeps going up. However, one day, as he is dangling over the furious tiger, he slips and falls. The man is terrified as the tiger gathers itself and prepares to pounce. The man begins running around the cage, with the tiger close behind.
Finally, the man starts screaming and yelling, “Help, Help me!”, but the tiger is quick and pounces. The man soon finds himself flat on his back looking up at the angry tiger. Suddenly, the tiger says:
“Shut up you idiot! Do you want to get us both fired?”