Stan and Ollie play bumbling circus performers who inadvertently drive the circus into bankruptcy. The circus can't pay them their wages so they are given a gorilla and a flea circus as payment. Bedlam ensues.

The ringmaster of a flea circus inherits a fortune...if he can find which chair it's hidden in.

In this animated comedic short, the entire entourage of a flea circus runs away to join a dog.

With the help of his assistant Anja, Ottocaro Weiss intends to put the plague on stage: circumstances beyond his control and a lack of fresh talent have forced him to close down his flea circus. For Weiss, the plague means the «extinction of everything that makes life miserable and low and freedom along with it. Unbeknownst to him, he has won the support of a patron who is of the exact opposite opinion: for Johannes Wagner, the plague is an organising principle, and, aided by his agent Moosbrugger, he is able to smuggle a new number onto the programme. Whereas Ottocaro Weiss means to represent the plague theatrically, what appears on stage is the scientific reality of the rat-borne infestation.