Sleeping Under the Lion Cage

He wasn't sure whether he wanted to be a writer or a zoologist, so he wrote to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and asked for a summer job working with the big cats. When he was accepted, he hitchhiked to meet up with the circus. On his first day, he was handed an ax and instructed to butcher a dead horse to feed the cats. He traveled around with the circus, sleeping under the lion cage. He said: "The circus was very important to me. It taught me how to live, about the importance of risks and survivability - the traveling, the temporariness of life, the impromptu arrangements, the friendships that heat up and cool, the love affairs, the coming into a new place and making a space for oneself with new acquaintances, putting up one's tent, so to speak."
- Describing Edward Hoagland on the Writer's Almanac