Interview circus people, and you’re usually treated to apocryphal stories of sawdust-filled diapers and old-world family dynasties with polysyllabic German or Italian names.
Circus troupes like to push the idea that the guy in the ring with the big cats has nursed those beasts since they were kittens. And if his father–and grandfather and great-grandfather–did the same in some dilapidated tent in northern Austria during the 19th Century, then the story’s even better.
But it’s not always true.
Take T.M., a.k.a. The Gator Guy, one of the stars of the 132nd edition of the storied Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, in town through Dec. 1. In his act, he manipulates five alligators and three pythons.
“T.M. has taken it upon himself to befriend the creatures from the reptile world that most of us assiduously avoid,” reads his official biography. This semi-mythic fellow, it says, is “a puppet, pauper, pirate, pawn and king.”
Actually, T.M. is Ted McRae. He grew up in inner-city Baltimore, studied accounting at the University of Dayton and spent quite a bit of time driving a forklift.
Just a few days before first stepping into the ring with lions and tigers, he was the emcee of karaoke nights at a chain of Mexican restaurants around the Washington beltway.
“I always liked animals,” the cheerfully candid McRae says a few minutes before donning his loincloth in Cleveland’s Gund Arena and sticking his head in a gator’s mouth. “When I was a kid, you could either walk through the neighborhood and risk being beaten up, or you could go through the woods. So I started going through the woods.”
Walking through the woods and taming a lion are not exactly the same thing.
McRae’s real entree into the lion’s den came from his cousin, a rap presenter and entrepreneur named Cedric Walker who had the crazy idea of creating a circus aimed specifically at black audiences. By the mid-1990s, the Atlanta-based UniverSoul Circus was touring around the country, sticking its tent in the middle of inner cities, and presenting circus acts against a soundtrack of rhythm and blues, hip-hop, gospel, salsa and jazz.
Walker had contracted with an English woman named Kay Rosaire to provide lions and tigers. Part of the deal was that she would train someone to work with them in the ring.
Walker’s original candidate ran scared. So Walker called his cousin. Within a couple of weeks, McRae was in the ring.
“I’d never been around lions and tigers in my life,” he says. “I just had the nerve to do it.”
And how did it go?
McRae pulls down his shirt, revealing a scar.
“A tiger had me by the throat, just like that,” he says. “It was my mistake. I was too tentative.” Rosaire helpfully unhooked the beast’s teeth. And McRae tried the trick again. He got it right this time.
At this point in our conversation, McRae’s eyes begin to mist. But he’s not remembering the pain.
“It was like Xena [the tiger] went back into the cage and told the rest of them I was all right,” he says. “I’d just gotten bitten by a tiger. I should have hauled ass. But I was still in the ring. And I realized right then that this was what I was born to do.”
Before long, UniverSoul decided to get rid of the tigers and lions and handed them off to the Clyde Beatty/Cole Bros. Circus, a troupe that does a lot of Shrine dates. McRae decided he wanted to stay with his cats.
Kenneth Feld, the owner of the Ringling Bros. name checked out the Beatty show. He liked the way McRae related to an audience. His planners had thought that an act with snakes and reptiles would be a good idea. So he offered McRae the gig–even though McRae was no alligator expert.
McRae joined Ringling Bros. in December, leaving his cats behind. “Hey, it’s the greatest show on earth. Who does not want to work with the best?”
But by February, misfortune had struck McRae again. One of the five Ringling gators–the one in the picture that accompanies this column–turned out to have a permanently violent temper. It whipped around one night and bit off a part of his thumb.
It was, he says, his mistake again.
“My main worry at the time,” he says, “was that I was going to have to miss a show.”
Within a couple of weeks, he was back. As was the ill-tempered gator.
Backstage, he says, a few people joke with him that T.M. stands for “Thumb Missing.” But he doesn’t mind.
The circus may not have been in his parents’ blood, but it flows through McRae’s veins. He loves the diversity of the cast. As he talks, he watches one of his sons playing in the ring with a child of one of the Ringling acrobats.
McRae observes that the circus is a great place to raise a family. And if he cannot claim a multigenerational tradition, at least his kids will be able to in the future, if they inherit their father’s sawdust dreams.
“I’d do a circus act with spiders if they’d let me,” McRae says, eyes flashing. “And I hate spiders.”
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Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is appearing through Nov. 17 at Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont and from Nov. 19 through Dec. 1 at the United Center, 1901 W. Madison St. $10.50-$50. 312-559-1212.
