Years ago, I traveled one season with the Shrine Circus for its run through Maine and eastern Canada. My job was to manage the concessions.

In Portland, as I was waiting for the truck with the concession equipment to arrive, I sat in the arena’s empty bleachers. Equipment of all sorts, from trapeze bars to music stands, was being unloaded, but it was the arrival of the lions that caught my attention.

The five huge jungle cats, each in a separate cage, were towed one at a time into the arena. The cages had bars on the sides and steel sliding doors on each end. The enclosures could be linked together so that when the doors were pulled open from the top, they formed a long open tunnel. The door on the far end would be connected to a large performance cage, and thus the beasts had a safe and secure entrance at show time. When the lion-taming act was over, the beasts would be prodded back into the tunnel one at a time and the doors closed one after another so the cats each ended up again in a separate cage.

The cages were big enough that a pacing lion could take about five steps before having to turn around. The lions were pacing in their cages when one suddenly did something bizarre. He took four quick steps and, instead of turning around, rammed his head into the metal door at the end. The door was very solid and the impact made me wince.

The four-hundred-pound prisoner went to the end of his cell, turned, and again rushed quickly forward, crashing his head into the solid metal. Then he did it a third time.

I got up and went to check on my stuff. The concession truck was still a half hour out, so I returned to my seat in the arena. In the meantime, the lion tamer had shown up and was scratching his head.

“Where’s Simba?” he said as he looked at four cages instead of five.

I had noticed earlier that when Simba banged his head against the end of his cage, the impact caused the structure to roll forward about six inches. From my vantage point in the bleachers, I spotted the missing lion. Way across the arena, Simba was about three head-butts away from rolling out the open freight doors. He was escaping, cage and all.

The lion tamer, swearing and shaking his head, hopped on a four-wheeler and easily caught the wayward beast, dragging the cage back to the others. Simba didn’t get away, but I admired the attempt.

I could imagine him head-butting his way to the docks and aboard a ship. Landing in Africa, he would escape his cage and run into the jungle. As he hunted and mated, and enjoyed his hard-won freedom, he would think of his less-determined friends who get carted from town to town, have to jump through hoops, and are fed a daily allotment of Lion Chow (Now with added soy and artificial gazelle flavoring.)