Samantha Sage was always an animal lover, and some of her favorite parts of her job as a stagehand for the Siegfried and Roy show at The Mirage were the cues where she worked alongside some seemingly ferocious creatures.

Sage recalls sitting off-stage with a black panther, Macumba, as he sat in his illusion box before going on stage for the act.

“This black panther would look up at me with those yellow eyes. I’d blow on him and he’d purr,” Sage said of the cue she ran twice nightly for seven years. “Yes, I was a stagehand running props and setting up lights, but I got to do so much more.”

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