Clowning at the Snake Farm in Thailand

“Don’t let the cobras get ya!” Dougie Ashton counseled me in the Ringling Blue Unit clown alley prior to my leaving on a voluntary LDS mission to Thailand. Dougie had spent some time in Southeast Asia touring with his family’s circus back in the Sixties. “There’s nothing but snakes and dried fish in the whole darn place” was his assessment of Thailand. “Have your Mormonite boss transfer you to Darwin if you want the tropics -- I can set you up with some skirts that you can baptize over and over again!” He waggled his eyebrows at me, a la Groucho Marx.

“Get thee behind me,Satan!” I cried in disgust, backing out of the alley, and right smack into Rhubarb Bob, the Assistant Performance Director. His hatchet face was more dyspeptic-looking than usual as he wished me good luck on my proselyting endeavors. He was about the only one to do so. Even my parents, who were non-LDS, thought my volunteering for religious service was an insane waste of time. I obviously had been brain-washed into doing it. But since I was convinced it was the right thing to do, the die was cast -- I sent in my papers to Salt Lake and never looked back. Not even when I was assigned to Thailand -- a place I had never even heard of before.

I wouldn’t mind the dried fish, I told myself, but, like Indiana Jones, I had no love for snakes. To this day they make me feel uncomfortable, what with their cold lifeless eyes staring at me. Ugh!
Even when, in later years, I returned to Thailand to work as an English teacher, the sight of a snake slithering through one of the open classroom windows was enough to force me to send the children outside for an impromptu recess -- just so we cold all stampede out of the room at once.

I have detailed elsewhere how I was requested to bring along my slapstick trappings to do charity shows for the Thai Red Cross as part of my missionary calling. Soon after I arrived in Bangkok I was requested to do a show for the staff and guests at the Queen Saovabha Memorial Institute -- which sure sounded like a classy gig to me. The Institute, I was told, was part of the Queen’s Red Cross patronage. I’d come a long way, both figuratively and literally, since my days as a First of May who didn’t know a guy wire from an elephant tub. I took extra care with my makeup and costume that day -- trying to keep the clown white from melting off my face from the tropical heat and my clown blouse from showing deep sweat stains under the armpits. I powdered down with about a pound of Saint Luke’s Prickly Heat Powder.  

Imagine my horror, then, when I arrived at the Institute only to find out is was a big snake farm!  Too late, I was escorted past cages and pits filled with vipers and cobras and brightly colored coral snakes, while my palsied hands waved an unsteady greeting to the enthusiastic crowd that had gathered to see my show. A hastily constructed bamboo stage was set up in the courtyard, with a sea of clattering wooden folding chairs surrounding it.

All went well to begin with. My musical saw routine garnered big laughs and shouts of “Chayo!” (which loosely translated means ‘bravo.’) I tipped over in my folding chair a dozen times, nearly reducing it to kindling, to great applause. And I panicked ‘em with a solo rendition of ‘Bigger & Bigger.’  

But then a long piece of liana vine unfortunately blew onto the bamboo stage from a nearby seesiat tree -- which I mistook as some kind of python ready to strangle me. With a hoarse scream I scrambled away from it and toppled off the stage and into a koi pond. Thrashing around in an agonized panic, thinking I was about to be boarded by a sea snake, I set up squealing like a stuck pig -- which the crowd thought was a splendid finale to my performance. I received a standing ovation.

I was escorted from the Institute, a broken man, by the Director and some of his staff, and given a rousing sendoff as I crawled into a taxi back to my humble missionary apartment. My companion, Elder Seliger, who had no fear of snakes and no liking for clowns, told me I should keep the aquatic ending to my show from now on. My reply to his suggestion was not, strictly speaking, phrased in a very godly manner -- but it was certainly heartfelt!