Two lions escape from a circus in small town New Zealand. Who you gonna call? Produced by Justin Gregory.

Two lions escape from a circus in small town New Zealand. Who you gonna call?

In the beginning, it wasn't really about the lions: the starting point for this story was a dog.

'Jay' was a German Shepherd, a police dog, and his beat was Auckland in the 1970s. His handler was Constable Mike Lodge; the two were a team, and good mates as well.

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But the working life of a police dog isn't that long. Most retire around eight years of age. Jay was getting close and the higher-ups told Mike that he'd have to be put down if he couldn't do the job anymore.

Jay was a good dog, and Mike wasn't going to let him go out that way - and anyway, he was getting tired of big city policing.

So Mike talked the bosses into letting him transfer to a quieter station somewhere and to take Jay with him. They agreed.

"I applied for about three different places," he remembers.

"And eventually got Lawrence."

Lawrence is a storied small town in Central Otago, on State Highway 8 between Dunedin and Alexandra. The New Zealand national anthem was composed there, and nearby is Gabriel's Gully where the discovery of gold in 1860 led to the Otago Gold Rush. At one stage, more people lived in Lawrence than Dunedin.

That wasn't the case when Mike, his family, and Jay arrived in early 1978. There were just a few hundred people living there. Mike soon knew them all.

"They were a loose bunch," he chuckles, "very friendly".

The people of Lawrence wanted to know about him, too.

"Being the new cop in town, they tested me."

It's forgivable then, that when Mike got a phone call one night from the local headmaster about some lions on the loose in the town, he didn't believe him.

Simpson Park in Lawrence is just south of the town's main road and next door to the Lawrence Area School. It's used for all kinds of sporting and social events and on 30 March 1978 was partly occupied by some welcome visitors; Carlos' Circus, making a return to the town.

Fast forward a few hours to 8.20pm: about 400 people, including children, are watching the second show of the night. Two of the circus' three lions, Sultan (a male) and Sonia (a female) have left the ring as usual at the end of their segment but found their cage wasn't properly closed. It's not entirely clear how this happened but it's believed that a new circus employee had simply failed to lock it…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details