Last Friday a circus, The Dillon Circus to be exact, came to town and ever since it has been all that our family has talked about. Granddad was convinced that it was all a scam. According to him, you can never trust a clown. Dad thought that the council was to blame. They should never have let the circus use that land.

Ciarán didn't really care. All that he could think about was throwing popcorn at the clowns. Personally, I didn't care. I thought the circus was for children, which I certainly was not then and am not now. Anyway, on Sunday night last, Mam made Ciarán and I take Oisín to the circus or rather she made me take Oisín and Ciarán.

Shauna was going with her friend Clíona. The first half was bearable. We saw lions, tigers, clowns, the tightrope walkers and the horses. During the interval I went to buy coke for myself and some popcorn for Ciarán to throw at the clowns (he is so easily amused!).

When I went back to my seat, I thought it strange that they had taken away all the bars, but once the strongest man in the world came on I forgot all about it. Just as the elephants were about to enter, a group of mice came through a gap in the wall and frightened the elephants. There was utter chaos.

The elephants were everywhere. Children were screaming, parents were panicking and the animals were roaring. Within seconds, the tigers and lions had also escaped. Oisín burst into tears. Just then one of the circus workers, obviously startled by all the noise, opened the doors only to be met with a stampede of tigers, lions and elephants.

I was in complete panic, Oisín was crying but Ciarán had not even budged. He was the only person in the whole circus that was still sitting down. He was watching the chaos as if it was a play and believe it or not he was still stuffing popcorn into his mouth!

I dragged Ciarán from his seat, put Oisín under my arm and ran for dear life. When I had run for a while, my arm began to hurt. I put Oisín down. Just then, a lion turned and started to chase Oisín. Poor Oisín, who had just only learned to walk, was now forced to run. Eventually the lion got bored and grabbing Oisín, we ran home. We didn't get a wink of sleep that night.

The next morning, we all listened to the local radio before going to school. The newsreader said that the animals had all been found except for one of the lions and that there was a six hundred pounds reward offered for finding him. My best friend Mary had heard about the reward and we both decided that we would find that lion and claim the reward.

At twelve o' clock that night, Mary and I sneaked out of the house. We met at Fitzgilbert's newsagents and headed for the wood. We had heard a rumour that the lion had been spotted there. We had a flashlight and a lot of rope. It was dark and cold but we climbed a tree and waited patiently on a low branch until the lion passed beneath us. I lowered a rope about his neck and pulled hard.

I don't know how we did it but we managed to drag him back to Mary's house and lock him in one of the sheds (Mary lives on a farm). We decided not to say anything to anyone until after school the next day. Next morning, I woke up and went to school as usual. During break-time we decided that we would walk back to Mary's house after school and bring the lion from there to my house. And that is exactly what we did. As we approached my house, proud of our achievement, I noticed a garda car outside the front door. How could they have known about the lion? We were in for a bit of a surprise. The guards had come for a completely different reason. Apparently, one of the clowns had been kidnapped and had almost been killed. We had been so wrapped up with the lions that we hadn't noticed. But Granddad had. He had solved the whole mystery and had caught the two kidnappers. Our finding the lion did not seem so significant after that. Granddad is photographed on the front page of last week's local paper, The Ballybridge Examiner, with a big article about him beneath it and not one word about Mary or me! Ciarán thinks it's hilarious but trust him! Mam thinks we're great and Granddad wants to write a book about himself. I was trying to be helpful and told him to call the book 'My Granddaughter'. He's not amused but then what's new!!