Ivan Ringel

"I've also been in areas where there was no meat. I was in Romania, and they were buying horses from all these gypsies and stuff. But alive. We had it on a truck, and it was transported. My job was to kill it. I felt sorry for it. I had this beautiful white horse. I went in with an axe and a knife, and now he started screaming. Because I was feeding them, too, so they wouldn't die on me. So I packed up and left. So, I didn't feed for maybe four days. Because I felt sorry for them. Then I had a clown there that I always gave a bottle to, and he killed it. Then I can take the animal, the horse, apart. Yes, but I would never kill it. So I didn't feed for days, even though I did things like that. Head in the mouth and stuff like that."

"Before I went to Astrakhan, I was still in Donetsk. That's where the war is today. There was a beautiful circus, a big one! A tigress died there. All right, let's make a conspiracy. She was quite young, two years old, so why would she die? Then we'll do a consultation. So I thought we'd go to a hospital. No way! We arrived at a former, disused mine shaft. It was a huge hole, like 50 metres by 50 metres. Deep! There were dead animals in it, dogs and stuff. Let me explain. Every half hour, there was a car that would come in there, topped with shot dogs that were shot on the road. Cats, dogs, everything. They were still half alive. There was still blood coming out of the car. There were two people in there. It was a horror. An old woman who had one tooth and a leather apron and a man. There was a rubber belt. They threw it all on the belt. The animals were falling into the hole. It was smouldering. What a smell! But before they threw it on the belt, they pulled the fur off. They were cutting off the hams. It was all sold there. Dog meat. A lot of it was puppies and stuff. They had two dogs, big dogs. They'd always pounce on the puppies and eat everything. What a horror! If I filmed that, it would drive people crazy here in Europe."

"You go in as a winner, and you have to leave as a winner. That means they feel everything. As soon as you're angry or you're sick, you have a fever, it all comes at them that morning, and they see you as prey. It all has to come off of you, and you have to go there sovereignly. I didn't even want to talk to anybody an hour before the show. So I wouldn't get excited. I always went to see how people reacted when the show started. See if there isn't a woman knitting or a guy snoring. That's when you adjust. A huge problem was when we did [performances] for the disabled. Some in wheelchairs, some in recliners. The tigers were going crazy. In nature, all that goes away."

"Then there was another snag, that the fence opening was different there. I let them in, and now one lioness sniffed it out and came through. She ran among the people. What about now, right? As I said, every permanent circus is connected to a hotel. She was flying around the hotel. All over the place. She flew among the horses. The horse trainer would fly in with a knife and cut them off so they wouldn't strangle themselves. She was flying under their bellies, how scared she was. Before she knows it, the animal is terrified like that. Coincidentally, a nurse was shaving himself. The horse trainer also had a Great Dane, coloured like a lion. The lioness was sniffing his ass, and as he was shaving, the dog's name was Agbar, and he shouted, 'Get lost!' He kept on shaving, and now he was curious because she kept sniffing his bottom, so he looked back - and it was a lion. There was a pile of hay, he jumped into it and burrowed all the way to the bottom. It was grotesque! But what about people? They were climbing all over the roofs, pulling ladders behind them. It looked like a Chaplin slapstick to me. What a bummer! The band played on like when the Titanic sank. The bandleader, after we caught her... There was a little cubbyhole for the director who'd just had a wee in the loo. When she came inside it, we shut it down. He had all kinds of boxes and amps and stuff. She smashed it up. Then we tunnelled back out. I had to keep going. I couldn't give up. She still wanted to stretch. So I was holding the door with all my strength, and she kept tripping me and trying to stretch. And then the bandleader asked me if I was going to do it every day, that it looked very good. This show."