This article that has turned into a YouTube video on our new YouTube channel. Why not check it out and watch the author lose his shit talking about a muff.
The original article it’s based on can be found after the jump.
For just over 6 centuries from the early 1200’s to the 1830’s, the Tower of London in England contained a kick-ass menagerie filled to bursting with animals from the four corners of the globe. Due to a unique historical combination of a general lack of fucks about the health and safety of the viewing public and a poor understanding of the specialized care exotic animals usually require, while the menagerie existed it wasn’t uncommon to hear stories about patrons being mauled to near-death.
Although historians aren’t really sure when the Royal Menagerie was first started, evidence suggests that it could have existed as early as 1204 when King John ate shit at the battle of Normandy and ended up lumbered with a boat filled with wild animals. After careful deliberation King John decided to dump the animals on his guards at the Tower of London, much to the delight of locals who relished the chance to see and poke sticks at exotic animals from the far side of the globe. Over the last few years of his reign King John sent more and more royal animals to the Tower, either because he had no space for them at his royal estates or more likely because he thought it’d be funny to see someone try and cram 40 peacocks into a box.
However it was when King John’s son, King Henry III took charge in 1216 that the menagerie really began to come into its own thanks in part to a series of gifts received by the King to commemorate his ascension to the throne from friendly rulers around the world including an elephant (famously the first ever seen in England), a polar bear (which was allowed to swin in the river Thames and eat fish) and some lions, all of which he sent to the Tower for safe keeping, occasionally stopping by to look at them when he had the time.
Over the next several centuries it became tradition for the King or Queen to house any exotic animals they received as gifts from foreign leaders, explorers and travellers with unpronounceable names in the Tower. To accommodate the influx of animals, cages and pens of all sizes were built around the tower’s grounds and keepers were hired to keep them in check, which didn’t really work as well as people hoped. Keepers often didn’t really know anything about the animals in the tower and frequently mistreated them either indirectly through ignorance or because they were dicks. On top of this, the public frequently teased and antagonised the animals by throwing food into their cages or reaching through the bars and pawing at their faces to try and pet them. This understandably led to many injuries including a young boy whose leg was almost ripped off by monkey’s using their muscular ape-forearms when he was inexplicably allowed to go into their cage which also inexplicably featured a roaring fireplace and just watch them do their thing. A female keeper also lost the ability to stay alive when she tried to pet a lion and it bit her arm off. For many years the menagerie was also home to an alcoholic zebra who after years of being fed beer, would frequently escape its cage and stumble around drunk being ridden by one of the boys paid to sweep up its shit. A young keeper also once accidentally opened a gate separating a bunch of tigresses and lions, prompting the tigresses to begin mauling the shit out of the lions and it was only when better trained keepers wielding red hot iron rods entered the room that the animals were pulled apart. Regrettably the lions later succumbed to their wounds and perhaps more importantly, the scene never went on to become an album cover.
But not all of the big cats in the tower were violent or itching to gorge themselves on supple man-flesh, as one female leopard was keen to prove. According to historical reports, for a period in the 18th century the Tower contained a singular female leopard who, for unknown reasons, was obsessed with slapping the hats from people’s heads as they walked past her cage and stealing their umbrellas, which she’d drag into her cage using her big fluffy paws before tearing them apart with her teeth. The big cat was also reportedly very fond of destroying people’s “muffs” a word we’re not going to bother looking up to tell you what it means because it’s way funnier.
Sadly the menagerie was shut down in 1835, presumably due to pressure from the public who were tired of their muffs being held to ransom by a leopard and all of the animals it contained were sent to zoos around the country.
