“What do you mean, I can't pull a rabbit from a hat? Magicians have been pulling rabbits from hats since hats were invented!”
“Calm down, Roger! It's not like you'll never get to pull a rabbit from a hat ever again. It's just for this one show in this one town. The organiser for the Springfield Spring Fair told me that, according to town ordinance 1089 slash 7 b; 'No act of entertainment may use animals in said act of entertainment, without the prior written approval of the town's animal welfare officer and the attendance of a town approved vet'”
“So we need to talk to this animal welfare officer and organise a vet?”
“I tried, but it seems that the vet who was also the welfare officer retired several years ago and the council never got round to appointing a replacement. So by default it has become no acts with animals.”
“It doesn't seem right; I've been pulling rabbits from hats since I started the act. Are there any exceptions?”
“The only exception I could work out is that despite people, on a technical level, being animals, people can be in acts.”
“Well, I suppose that would be a small mercy, but how am I meant to produce you, if I don't have the rabbit I've just pulled from the hat to put in the cage to transform into you when I pull the lid off?”
“We could, perhaps borrow a fire cage so that you could produce me that way instead.”
“I'm surprised that you would suggest that; you know how I feel about using fire on stage; and I bet Springfield has got an ordinance about that too. If we did all of our regular act and added fire, they would probably fill the audience with firemen, leaving no space for paying customers.”
“Yes, sorry. For a moment I forgot about that incident.”
“I guess they don't want me producing doves either.”
“No, the only animals that aren't counted as animals are people.”
“I guess you're going to have to take the place of all the animals, Mowena.”
“How's that going to work. I'm usually busy enough assisting on stage, or prepping stuff backstage?”
“I think I'm getting some ideas, but I'll need to work them out properly, then let you know when we rehearse the changes on Thursday. 'Til then enjoy the couple of days rest.”
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The curtains to the stage that had been set up on the Springfield Showground opened. Onto the stage stepped a very dapper figure in a pale grey dress suit. An impression undercut by the fact that his arms were straight out in front of him, because the top hat he was wearing was several sizes too large and covered his head entirely.
After a few faltering steps, he stopped and pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. He waved the white silk square about for a few seconds, then crumbled it into his hand. Moments later a black stick snapped into existence in his hand, followed by a few gestures to assure the sceptics in the audience that the white silk was completely gone. He used the stick to bumble a little more confidently about the stage until he found the front edge, when he stepped backwards a couple of steps and lifted the oversized hat from his head.
“Welcome to my first magic show in Springfield.” This resulted in a few cheers from the audience at the mention of the town's name. While the cheers died down, Roger tapped the end of the cane on the stage. The cane suddenly had a tripod on the end, which allowed the magician to stand it on the stage and socket the hat onto the upper end. “It is spring in Springfield and this is a magic show; what better time or place to produce a rabbit from a hat?”
He reached into the hat on top the cane and pretended to feel around inside with increasing frustration at not being able to find the rabbit. Then there was a 'got him' expression crossed his face. He withdrew his hand, which was followed by two strips of grey furry fabric. “You'll have to forgive me, but my previous bunny was quite small.” His hands indicated cupping something about the size of his paired palms. “But I'm trying out slightly bigger rabbit, hence the slightly bigger hat.”
The magician pulled on the pair of fabric strips with evident signs of struggle; those nearest the stage could also hear sounds of discomfort coming from the hat. There was a sudden pop, resulting in there being a costume head, of a rabbit, sitting on the brim of the hat, which should have been too large to have come from inside the hat. A scattering of applause was heard.
From inside the head a voice was heard; a female voice doing their best Bugs Bunny impression; “What's up, doc?” which raised a laugh from the onlookers. This was followed up by a stage whisper, “See! I told you we needed an even bigger hat.”
By stages, the person in the Easter Bunny costume was lifted from the hat, followed by an awkward manoeuvre, where the person in the rabbit costume was allowed to sit on the magician's shoulder to extract the rabbit feet that were longer than the hat was deep. The magician then squatted to get those feet to the floor, so that the costumed person could stand on the stage.
“Where's my assistant?” the magician asked the rabbit standing nearly a foot taller next to him. The rabbit shrugged.
The magician rushed off stage and returned with a cloth-draped cage. “Alright, in you get!” he told the rabbit. There followed a struggle to get the costumed person into the cage via a door on the side and further effort the tuck in the character's feet and latch the door shut.
With the bunny curled in the cramped cage, the magician pulled on the cloth that had been on top and hanging down the back, so that it hung down on all sides. He covered the front last, which allowed the rabbit to demonstrate the lack of space in the cage by barely managing to wave at the audience.
Once the front was covered, Roger went behind the draped cage and took a hold of the top, which he lifted away and dropped on the floor beside him. On the table that had supported the cage, stood Mowena in a black satin bunny-girl outfit complete with matching satin bunny ears on her head. Of the walls of the cage, or the Easter bunny costume there was no sign. The assistant did a turn to show off the fluffy white ball attached to the satin costume at the base of her spine before lightly hopping from the table to join the magician in accepting the applause.
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“And now for a bit of audience participation. I would like a volunteer who has a large denomination bank note. It used to be relatively easy to find such a person, but in these times and with cashless payments, it is getting more difficult.”
Fortunately, a volunteer was found who possessed a twenty pound note. He was introduced to the audience and given a marker to sign the evidence of his disposable income.
“You, of course, know what magicians habitually do with money?” Roger held up the signed note and pretended to rip it in two.
The audience began laughing at the volunteer's horror that is note was being destroyed, and continued when the saw the frustration on Roger's face.
“That's the problem with plastic currency, from a magician's point of view; it is very difficult to rip.”
Mowena arrived on stage pushing an open-fronted box which she parked behind the magician and his volunteer. She drew a few appreciative wolf-whistles, because she had changed into a black velvet cat-suit, with cat ears on a head band and whiskers drawn on her cheeks; the costume was completed by a tail dangling from the base of her back.
“Given the difficulty of ripping a plastic note and the fact that instead of burning, they shrivel up; I'll have to fall back on the only alternative that I could think of.” He reached back to the open topped box and raised a pair of scissors. He put these to use, cutting the note in half and then putting the two halves together and cutting them in half again.
While Roger was converting the quarters into eighths, Mowena returned with a large bird cage on an stand. “Here, hold these!” the magician said as he handed the parts of the destroyed note to his assistant.
Roger then performed a small card trick, 'to compensate his volunteer for the loss of his money'. At the end he said to Mowena, “Give the man back his money.”
The audience and the volunteer half expected that Mowena would hand the note back to the volunteer whole. But Mowena seemed to be embarrassed. “I'm sorry, I ate it. I thought they were crackers and I was suddenly hungry; they didn't taste very nice.”
“Oh dear, in that case, we're going to have to resort to extreme measures to get the money back.” He pulled a cloth from the box and raised it in front of Mowena. When he lowered it, Mowena was gone. There was also a new addition to the top of the box. Standing, displayed, on eggcups were an orange, a lemon and an egg. The unusual thing about the egg was it was the size of an ostrich egg, rather then the expected hen's egg.
“Would you unhook the cage and bring it over here please,” the magician asked the volunteer. “While the usual version of this trick a canary has eaten the money and I have to break the egg in the cage having cut it out of the lemon, which I have previous cut out of the orange. That isn't going to work, because the egg is too big to fit inside the lemon or the orange.”
The volunteer placed the cage on the top of the open box behind the display of fruit and egg. The magician opened a small door in the front of the cage and quickly discovered that the egg was too large to fit through the opening.
“Oh dear. It looks like I'll need to find a way to shrink the egg a bit to get it into the cage.” He pulled a knitted cover from a pouch on the back of the open box. “Would you mind putting this cover on the cage and hanging it back up?” he asked the volunteer. “Now I need to work out how to get an oversized egg through an undersized hole.” He dithered for a short while, watching his volunteer roll the cover over the cage so that it looked like a tea-cosy.
As the volunteer picked up the cage, the magician smiled that he had a solution to his dilemma. “Some of you will be aware that there is a trick that anyone can do where you manage to get a peeled boiled egg into a bottle. Well, I was remembering another version where the egg still seems to have its shell on; the trick to that one involves soaking the egg in vinegar before the demonstration and using a bottle with a wider neck. Of course, I don't have a gallon of vinegar to hand, but I think that the acidity of the lemon and the orange will help the magic to work.”
The magician picked up the the egg and the lemon and began rubbing the two together. After a few seconds he had an enlarged lemon in his hands and there was no sign of the egg. The next thirty seconds were spent repeating the feat by vanishing the lemon by rubbing it against the orange under the watchful gaze of the volunteer. At the end he had in his hand an enlarged orange in his hand, which was not as big as the enlarged lemon had been, which had not been as large as the ostrich egg.
He grabbed a knife from the top of the box and began to carve into the orange. From inside the orange emerged a large lemon, but not as large as the original lemon had become. This, when cut open, revealed a hen's egg that matched the colour of the ostrich egg.
“That's a relief. It seems to have worked. I was a bit worried that I would not be able to break the ostrich egg, even if I could have got it into the cage.” The magician strode over to the covered cage that the volunteer had rehung on the stand. He raised the edge of the cover and opened the door. Reaching in, he made the motion of smashing the egg on the floor of the cage and then showed his hands empty.
Moments later a hand came out through a small gap in the cage cover, holding out a piece of money. The magician asked the volunteer to take it and check that it was his own bank-note that he had signed. The volunteer confirmed that he had his signed money back and was returned to the audience.
The magician raised the cover from the cage to show Mowena looking uncomfortably crammed inside the cage. Much of the audience was surprised that she appeared to have changed costume from a cat to a canary in a bright yellow dress and headdress that gave her the appearance of having a birds head, while still showing her face.
Instead of extricating his assistant, he punished her by putting the cover back down and then driving about a dozen wooden rods through the cage and cover and presumably the errant assistant within.
With rods withdrawn he raise a cloth in front of the cage and lowered it to show his assistant in her yellow dress, released from the cage and none the worse for having been multiply impaled in the very recent past.