A FEW weeks ago I wrote in this column about a hyena that escaped in the 1800s from a travelling circus near Loch Hourn and lived long enough around Glen Barisdale to terrorise the locals.
Shortly after my piece was published, a correspondent contacted me about a zebra of reputed Skye origin which appeared in a Glasgow circus in 1898.
The story goes that a Skyeman went to see Barnum and Bailey’s famous circus where he was surprised to see a tall man dressed in a scarlet coat and a tile hat standing in front of a large tent and shouting at the top of his voice: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, come in and see the Skye zebra. The only one of its kind in the world’. Being interested, he paid a shilling and entered. There indeed was an animal resembling a zebra. Its body was cunningly groomed, and its hoofs and tail were well camouflaged. Parts of its body was shaved and its horns, if it ever had any, were cut off.