Walt's Flea

A package arrived in the post the other day from the USA. When I got back from work I opened it with gleeful anticipation. It was an ex-flea from Magician, Inventor and Flea Circus performer Walt Noon. My particular flea was "Trixie, the flea on a Trapeze" and came with an official document of explanation. The trapeze fleas are selected from those that are calm but not docile so that they are not phased by the noise of the audience but move enough to cause the trapeze to swing. Walt's document also explains how he preserves the fleas so you know that you can enjoy them for years to come.

I hope Trixie enjoys her retirement as a charioteer.



If you want to buy your own trained flea, you can do so from flea-circus.com.

Summer of 1955

Mr Walter E Hunt was yet another Tivoli Garden visitor, who on a budget tour around Europe reached Denmark.

"From there I went to Tivoli Gardens, a popular tourist place similar in many ways to Disney Land. I was fascinated by a flea circus at one of the booths there. The ringmaster, using tweezers, hooked fleas up to small carts and wagons, which they pulled across small circus rings, and did other gymnastics. Skeptic that I am, I looked for magnets or other devices under the table but saw nothing."

More memories of the Tivoili Flea Circus

Dark Roasted Blend has been accumulating information of flea circus and has written an article on the Victorian Flea Circus.

One of the comments on the article was a lovely reminisce about the flea circus in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

farmgirl said...

"Wonderful article! I was fortunate to see the Flea Circus at the Tivoli Gardens in 1962. The fleas lived in a box and were brought out for the show. They were then attached to the little vehicles during the show. We could not see the fleas, only the little vehicles which magically moved along on the platform.

The wife presented the show to the audience, while the husband would go out to neighboring farms to find the fleas. He would feed them by rolling up his sleeve and give them a meal on his arm!

After they divorced, the wife no longer continued the flea circus. She converted the performing space at the Tivoli to a "Mouse House" which consisted of a small village of buildings such as a school, several stores, homes and police station, etc. which were empty and the mice ran around, in and out of these small buildings.

I brought my family to the Tivoli in 1978 and found the Mouse House after looking for the flea circus which was no more. There was a small set of bleachers where the audience could sit and watch this performance. It was a hilarious show watching the constant scouring around of the little mice., in and out of the buildings. I and my children were rolling with laughter."

Alberti Flea Circus at MerleFest

Later this month the Alberti Flea Circus will be appearing at the MerleFest music festival in North Carolina.

Thu 23 Apr – Sun 26 Apr 2009

Alberti Flea Circus: http://albertifleacircus.com
MerleFest: http://www.merlefest.org/

Address: PO Box 120 Wilkesboro, NC 28697
Phone: 1-800-343-7857

View other flea circus performances on the Flea Circus Calendar

Wiseman's Flea Circus

Richard Wiseman has been blogging about flea circuses and has stired up quite a debate about cruelty to fleas.

Snow fleas

Linda Kervin from Bridgerland Audubon Society has been writing about Snow Fleas, and how they arn't really fleas at all.

The Adventures of the Araknid Kid, Episode 1

Josh Alves has produced a new comic book set in a "Wild, Wild, West" type version of the "Old West" and called "The Adventures of the Araknid Kid". The first episode has a flea villian from Ritz Nabiscov's Flea Circus.



In good comic book style, the villians "Kracker & Flea", were formed when their travelling show was hit by a meteor. Kracker is a shape-shifting brute made of cracker crumbs and his flea became enlarged and super-smart.



There was a long development of the characters, Josh told me that Araknid Kid was developed out of a character created in high school called BugBoy. Kracker had started out as a research professor not a showman.

For more details of the book you can read a review of The Adventures of the Araknid Kid by Katherine Dacey

You can buy the book via the Araknid Kid website.