Perrecy-les-Forges (France) (AFP)

They were in full tour, or had just stopped to graze their animals, when the confinement nailed them on the spot: without recipes, the circuses try to survive, counting on a sometimes random solidarity.

"We stopped for the animals but there was confinement. We could not leave": Louis and Lucie Bornot parked the caravan of the "Cirque Circus", just before March 17, in a small parking lot opposite the Perrecy-les-Forges stadium (Saône-et-Loire).

The place was very inhospitable but it was only for a few days. The Bornots have been there for almost three weeks, frozen in a situation that exceeds them.

"We started our business only two years ago. We were starting to get started," continues Louis, 30, at the head of the small family circus.

"We were counting on March-April, it's a good time for us, with the Easter holidays," says the juggling balancer, very worried about "the insurance of the trucks that we will have to pay". "We have nothing in advance," he says.

"So that the circus does not run", the couple makes phone calls to the local stores "to ask if there is work". In vain for now.

"We eat pasta. Or eggs. Or egg pasta," says his wife Lucie. At his feet, his daughter Morgane, 5 years old, makes his drums in a bowl of yellow plastic, mixing with a bottom of water ears of wheat collected in a field. "I want to go to school," she mutters shyly.

The Kenner family, too, has "more pasta". "And the children of chocolate". But "the box is empty," warns Johnny. With his wife Katia, he had on March 4 planted his tiny gleaming yellow marquee in a car park in Châtillon-sur-Seine (Côte-d'Or).

After several shows, the little circus, also called "Circus", wanted to leave just before confinement to continue the tour. "But the prefecture told us no," recalls Johnny, 34.

"It is starting to take a long time. We would have to put money back in the cash register, for the loans to repay," explains the juggler-magician. "We have no partial unemployment. We have no help."

- 25 blocked circuses -

"But people are very nice," says Katia, a 30-year-old trapeze artist. "We were brought a pack of water; we are offered hay" for the pony and the llama, who are looking for a rare grass on a piece of land along the parking lot.

Sometimes it's a whole network of solidarity that is woven for the 25 or so circuses currently blocked in France, according to the blog topkapy.

Thus in Casteljaloux, a small town in Lot-et-Garonne, the town hall "passed on via social networks" the plight of the New Cirque Zavatta, blocked with a hundred animals, explains Christophe Henriot, director of village services. "People spontaneously came forward for hay, straw ..."

"I would not have thought of such solidarity. This is exceptional," says Jean Falck, trainer. "Four elephants, twenty dromedaries, thirty wild beasts, llamas ... It eats, these beasts. We get it for 3-400 euros per day. And we have no income," explains T -he. "For the big cats, I still have ten days of meat, no more," he warns.

Solidarity is not always obvious, however. In Perrecy-les-Forges, residents have made meadows available to the dozen small circus animals, but the taps at the stadium just opposite the Bornot caravan are turned off, the showers and toilets closed.

If he too has made a common land available, Mayor Claudius Michel recalls that "circuses are prohibited here", explaining that he had "lots of problems with circuses in the past".

"We seem to be terrorists. Sometimes we steal the showers ...", laughs Lucie. To get water, the couple had to plug into the fire hydrant. "And now we are called thieves."

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