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Courtney Ryley Cooper
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Title: Lions 'n' tigers 'n' everything
Author: Courtney Ryley Cooper
Release Date: June 6, 2023 [eBook #70918]
Language: English
Produced by: deaurider, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIONS 'N' TIGERS 'N'
EVERYTHING ***
LIONS ’N’ TIGERS ’N’ EVERYTHING
By Courtney Ryley Cooper
THE CROSS-CUT
THE WHITE DESERT
UNDER THE BIG TOP
THE LAST FRONTIER
LIONS ’N’ TIGERS ’N’ EVERYTHING
[Illustration: CAGEMATES. _Frontispiece._]
LIONS ’N’ TIGERS
’N’ EVERYTHING
BY
COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER
_ILLUSTRATED FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS_
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1924
_Copyright, 1922, 1923, 1924_,
BY COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER.
_All rights reserved_
Published August, 1924
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
CARL BRANDT
WITH THE GENUINE AFFECTION
OF
“THE DEAR OLD RHINOCEROS”
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xi
CHAPTER
I INSIDE THE TRAINING DEN 1
II TRAMPING IT TO CAGEDOM 40
III CHARACTER IN THE CAGES 55
IV KIDS OF THE CAGES 76
V THE DOG WAGON 109
VI MENAGERIE “PSYCH-STUFF” 145
VII THE ELLYPHANTS ARE COMING-G-G! 163
VIII A HUNDRED TONS OF PRANKISHNESS 191
IX THE KEEPER OF THE BULLS 213
ILLUSTRATIONS
Cagemates _Frontispiece_
PAGE
In the steel arena 6
A tiger being trained to ride horseback 6
Feed a hippopotamus and he’ll do the rest 38
Bon, the baby hippo, for whom a man gave his life 38
Indigestion makes a lion vicious in the arena 58
Never try to do this if the lion has a headache 58
Baby wild cats, and they look their part 64
Representative circus dogs 72
Baby lions are always sought after as pets 82
A pair of real “teddy bears” 82
A sick baby orang-outang 98
A baby camel with its mother, the “dumbbell baby” of
the menagerie 98
Baby Miracle, a few weeks before she decided to leave
this tempestuous world 102
Lion triplets 102
Collies make excellent circus dogs 114
Waiting to enter the big show 114
Young lions in the training den 154
Waiting for mealtime 154
An inbred lion, hence not a good worker 160
Circus men can’t beat these things, so they “jine ’em” 160
An elephant is the easiest to train and the hardest to
handle of any menagerie beast 178
A work elephant waiting for the crowds to leave the
circus grounds, when his labors will begin 178
Spring practice in the yard of winter quarters 192
The elephant turns naturally to clowning 192
In winter quarters 216
In the act of a breakaway 216
Old Mom and her girl friend Freida 222
Kas and Mo when they arrived in America 222
INTRODUCTION
“HURRY! HURRY! TH’ BEEG SHOW IS STARTING-G-G-G-G!”
Of course, you’ve been to the circus. You got there just in time to
hear the sideshow spieler tell you that there was fortay-y-y-y-y-five
minutes for fun an’ amusement beforah th’ beeg show, th’ beeg show,
would begin! Fortay-y-y-y-five minutes in which to view those
stra-a-a-nge people, to see The Cannibal Twins, the Skeleton Dude,
the Fat Lady who has taken everay-y-y-y known method of reducing in
an attempt to rid herself of her half a ton of flesh, but who gets
biggah, biggah and fattah, Ladies-s-s an’ Gents, everay living-g-g
breathing-g-g moment of her life!
You’ve given yourself plenty of time, so you think. You want to see the
menagerie and the lions and tigers and elephants, but the first thing
you know, that sideshow spieler has inveigled you inside the tent and
the next thing you know, somebody with a fog-horn voice is yelling in
your ear:
“Hurry! Hurry Everaybodi-e-e-e-e-e-e! Th’ Beeg Show is
Starting-g-g-g-g!”
Then you have to rush through the menagerie and get into your seat
before you exactly know what’s happened.
Well, it’s about the same way with the beginning of a book. You set
yourself to have a lot of fun seeing the main show, and then somebody
drags you off to a side performance and before you realize it, your
time for reading’s up and all you’ve gotten is a lot of advance
information as to what you’re going to find out if you finish the book.
I suppose I’ve a lot of the boy in me. I hate introductions. Despise
’em. Yet, in a way, they’re necessary. I’ve always wanted to write a
book where I could put the introduction at the end, or something like
that. Because, really, an introduction seems terribly necessary.
But since I couldn’t do that, I waited until I had finished writing
the rest of the book, and then I wrote this, which I am busily trying
to keep from being an introduction. But it seems that there’s no way
out. I might as well break down and confess--that’s what it is. Th’
sideshow, th’ side-show-w-w-w-w, Ladies-s-s-s an’ Gents, th’ sideshow,
while farther on, the main performance band is tuning up for the
grand-d-d entrée!
So, if you’re like me, and detest introductions, just let this part
of the book slide on by and wait until you’ve finished the rest. Then
maybe, some day when you haven’t anything to do, you can come back and
see what I’ve been doing all this talking about. It’s simply this:
I’ve often been asked why a circus carries so many animals around with
it; whether it is merely because it wants to “fill up space” or because
they are cheap or to take up time before the rest of the performance.
It really is none of these. Questions like that hurt a circus man’s
pride. He really thinks a lot of his animals, and he’s terribly proud
of the fact that he carries them around the country, because he knows
that from the fact that he does like animals a great portion of America
gains its knowledge of natural history.
There are comparatively few big zoölogical collections in America and
all these are in the big cities; especially is this true where jungle
animals are exhibited. The rest of the country must depend on the
circus to make possible a close knowledge of the various beasts of
faraway lands--and there is hardly a man or woman in America who was
reared in a rural community who did not gain his or her early studies
in this manner. And that pleases the circus man, because he always
wants to feel that he is something else than merely a purveyor of
amusement. Nor does he do it cheaply!
For instance, the next time the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and
Bailey Circus comes to town, you’ll find in its menagerie a total of
forty-four elephants. A number of them are babies, purchased at an
average price of about $2500 apiece, when all costs are considered.
Half of them are full grown, worth from $5000 to $10,000 each,
according to their performing ability. Lump them all at an average of
$4000 apiece, and you have an investment of $186,000 in elephants, to
say nothing of the food they eat, and of all animals, elephants are the
champion hay eaters.
That’s one item. The four giraffes are another, and in case you should
desire to purchase a first-class giraffe some day, just write out
a check for $15,000 and then trust to good fortune to get you the
animal. Giraffes are scarce. So are hippopotami and rhinoceri and great
apes, to say nothing of pythons, and jungle-bred tigers and lions and
leopards and other animals of their kind. Figuring the interest on the
investment alone, for the number of performance days which are granted
to the circus, it costs nearly $2000 a week to carry that menagerie
around the country. That is the amount the original outlay would earn
if it were invested in the ordinary channels of business. Nor does that
include the items of trainers, of food, of assistants, cage men, dens,
horses for transportation, railroad equipment and repairs, and steam
haulage. So a menagerie really isn’t such a cheap adjunct, is it? Nor
is that all.
A few years ago, John Ringling learned that there was a wonderful
ape in England. He had heard that it was a real gorilla--but didn’t
believe it. He went to England and to the home of the man and woman who
had reared the beast to health from a disease-ridden little thing which
had been landed in London from a tramp steamer. It was a real gorilla,
the first one that ever had thrived in captivity. John Ringling wanted
that animal for his circus. It meant that the people of the United
States would be given an opportunity to study something which neither
the combined efforts of scientists nor the hunting parties of the
animal companies of all the world had been able to give. He didn’t
need the gorilla. The menagerie was full as it was. But there was
the urge of the true circus man--to bring forth the thing which had
not been seen before, to present something new. It meant a gamble of
thousands of dollars. He took the chance. The check read for $30,000.
John Daniel, the gorilla, was brought to the United States--and lived
less than a month! Such are the risks taken by the circus man to keep
his menagerie up to the plane which he desires. This is not the only
instance.
Expeditions have been fostered, men sent away from the United States
for months, even years at a time, to gain some special animal. Perhaps
the expedition is a success. More often it is a failure. But the crowds
which throng through the marquee into the menagerie see nothing but
the gilded cages and the picket line of elephants, giving but little
thought to the effort and expense behind it all. Which worries the
circus man not at all. What he is after is to get people into that
menagerie.
That, in the final analysis, is of course the real reason behind the
menagerie--to help get people into the circus. But in doing that,
a number of other things are accomplished. In the first place, the
rural population is thereby given its knowledge of natural history.
The farmer’s boy and the boy of the city not large enough to support
a zoo get their first sight of the lion, the tiger, the elephant and
giraffe and hippopotamus in a circus menagerie. With that, there comes
the inevitable human attribute of making comparisons--and following
that, study comes easier. It’s much more pleasant to read in the
newspaper about some one you know, than it is to read about some one
wholly abstract. The same is true of animals. After a person has seen
the tigers in a circus, he wants to know more of them. That’s when the
books come in.
Nor is science neglected by the circus. It was due to the importation
of John Daniel by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey that
the anthropologists of New York were able to dissect a gorilla brain
and carry on their studies through an actual autopsy upon a specimen
of an animal group which has been almost as mysterious as the fabled
Dodo. The same thing was true with a giant animal called Casey, which
was imported several years ago from Cape Lopez, Africa, by way of
Australia, by a man named Fox. The animal was a mystery, and it still
is a mystery. It looked like a chimpanzee, yet had characteristics and
size which marked it as different from any other chimpanzee which ever
had come to this country. It also had gorilla characteristics, yet it
was not a gorilla. It died on an operating table in Tampa, Florida, of
acute appendicitis, and following its death an autopsy was performed,
showing surprising indications. For one thing, the speech centers of
the brain displayed remarkable development, giving the hint that had
the animal lived, there might have come the time when it would have
been able to speak with the articulation of a low order of humanity.
Other developments showed a close relationship to the human brain--at
least a tendency in that direction. Had the circus which exhibited it
known all that beforehand, it might have advertised it as the missing
link. But the circus didn’t, which was perhaps just as well.
However, one thing remains--Casey was a mystery, and to the circus
world belongs the credit of bringing into general knowledge an animal
which hinted, at least, of a strange race of ground apes which may yet
be discovered in Africa, showing a development different from that of
the chimpanzee and of the gorilla, yet combining both, and aiding the
scientists in their researches into the beginnings of man. That Casey
was a certain type of chimpanzee was, of course, true. But what type?
And what gave him his peculiar, closely human countenance? And his
great size? He was nearly twice as large as his friend and companion
Biz, an ordinary chimpanzee, and one saw in them the dissimilarity that
one notices between two widely different races of men. If Casey could
only have explained!
Some day another Casey may come to America. And another following that.
Circus men will bring them when they come, and the investigations which
follow may cause many a surprising result.
And by the way, the next time you go to the circus, just try an
experiment and see how much more real amusement and interest you get
out of looking at the animals. Try a new viewpoint. Just remember that
we are all animals; we all belong to the same kingdom. With that in
mind, experiment with the idea of looking at those animals not as just
so many mere brutes, but as merely a different branch of the animal
kingdom to which you belong. Look upon them as foreigners, as visitors
to your land from a different shore, strange but willing to learn, and
with far greater perceptive powers, perhaps, than we have.
As I have mentioned before, the human race is egotistical. It likes to
believe that it knows everything. But a close study of animals will
reveal that perhaps they can teach us things, and that, in their way,
they may have every bit as much sense as we have. A dog, you know, can
understand his master’s slightest whim and mood. But few indeed are the
masters who can understand their dogs!
THE AUTHOR
LIONS ’N’ TIGERS ’N’ EVERYTHING
CHAPTER I
INSIDE THE TRAINING DEN
I remember, rather distinctly, the first time I ever went into the
steel arena. I was to meet three lions and an equal number of tigers,
all full grown, and unintroduced, so far, to any one but their original
trainer. Naturally, I believed I knew beforehand just about what would
happen.
Outside the arena, on one side, would be three or four men with long
iron rods, the points of which were heated white hot,--sufficient to
halt any beast in the attack. On the other side would be an equal
number of attendants, equipped with an invention which I never had
seen, but which I knew all about, a thing called an “electric prod
rod,” coupled up with the electric light wires and capable of spitting
thousands of volts of electricity at the lion or tiger which might seek
to devour me. I, personally, would have two revolvers, one loaded with
blank cartridges, for use during the ordinary course of the visit and
to cow the beasts into a knowledge that I was their superior; the other
equipped with steel-jacketed bullets in case of a real emergency.
There was a certain amount of foundation for my beliefs. Back in
childhood days, when I had been a runaway clown with a small,
tatterdemalion circus, the menagerie had consisted of one lion, vicious
to the extreme and permanently blinded by blows from a leaden-tipped
whip, and three scarred and scurvy-appearing leopards which hated
humans with enthusiastic passion, and which eventually accomplished
their much desired ambition of killing the trainer who had beaten them
daily for years. From that menagerie experience I knew that all animals
were beaten unmercifully, that they were burned and tortured and shot,
and that the training of any jungle animal could be carried out in only
one way--that of breaking the spirit of the beast and holding it in a
constant subjection of fear. But--
Only one man was in the menagerie house of the circus winter quarters
when I entered--the trainer. The steel arena stood, already erected, in
the center of the big building, but I looked in vain for the attendants
with the electric prod rods, and the men with the white-hot irons. As
for the trainer himself, I failed to notice any bulges in his pockets
which might denote revolvers; in fact, he carried nothing except two
cheap, innocent-appearing buggy whips. One of these he handed me in
nonchalant style, then motioned toward the arena.
“All right,” he ordered, pulling back the steel door, “get in.”
“Get in?” Everything was all wrong, and I knew it. “Where are the
animal men?”
“Over at the cookhouse, eating dinner. I’ll let the cats into the
chute. Go ahead inside so I can strap the door.”
“But--”
“I’ll come in after I’ve let the cats through from the permanent cages.
I want you in there first, though, so they can see you the minute they
start into the chute. Then you won’t surprise ’em, see, and scare ’em.
Just stand still in the center as they come in. If any of ’em get
excited, just say ‘seats!’ in a good, strong voice, and tap ’em with
that buggy whip. By that time I’ll be in there.”
“But where’s my gun? And aren’t we going to have any of the men around
with hot irons or electric prods--”
“Electric what?” The trainer cocked his head.
“Electric prod rods--you know, that throw electricity.”
“Cut the comedy,” came briefly; “you’ve been readin’ them Fred Fearnot
stories! Nope,” he continued, “there ain’t going to be any hot irons or
electric prods, whatever they are, or nothin’. Just you an’ me an’ the
cats an’ a couple of buggy whips!”
Whereupon, somewhat dazed, I allowed myself to be shunted into the
arena. The door was closed behind me--and strapped. Shorty, the animal
trainer went to the line of permanent cages, shifted a few doors, then
opened the one leading to the chute. A tiger traveled slowly toward me,
while I juggled myself in my shoes, and wondered why the buggy whip
had suddenly become so slippery in my clenched hand. While this was
happening, the Bengal looked me over, dismissed me with a mild hiss,
and walked to the pedestal. Then, almost before I knew it, the den
was occupied by three tigers and three lions, none of which had done
anything more than greet me with a perfunctory hiss as they entered!
Already Shorty was unstrapping the door, himself to enter the den.
Then, one by one, the animals went through their routine, roaring and
bellowing and clawing at Shorty, but paying no attention whatever to me!
“Part of the act,” explained the little trainer as he came beside me
for a moment, “trained ’em that way. Audience likes to see cats act
vicious, like they was going to eat up their trainer. But a lot of it’s
bunk. Just for instance--”
Then he turned to the lion which had fought him the hardest.
“Meo-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!” he said.
“Meo-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!” answered the lion, somewhat after the fashion of
an overgrown house cat.
Following which, a loose purring issued from Shorty’s lips, to be
echoed by the tigers.
“That’s their pay!” came laconically as the trainer walked to the
chute. Then, “All right, Kids! Work’s over!”
Whereupon the great cats bounded through the doors for their permanent
cages again, and still somewhat hazy, I left the steel arena.
Everything had gone wrong! There had been no firing of a revolver, no
lashing of steel-tipped whips; something radical had happened since the
old days when Pop Jensen had beaten those three leopards about on the
Old Clattertrap Shows. Either that or Pop Jensen had been an exception!
Since that first introduction, I’ve learned a few things about animals.
A great many of these little facts have been gained by personal visits,
often in as narrow a space as an eight-foot permanent cage in which
the other occupant was anything from a leopard to a lion. And I’ve
learned incidentally that Pop Jensen wasn’t an exception. He just
belonged to another day, that is all, and his day is past. The animal
trainer of the present is a different sort, with a different attitude
toward the beasts under his control, different theories, different
methods, and different ideas. Ask a present-day trainer about hot
irons and all you’ll gain is a blank look. He wouldn’t know how to
use them, and if he did, he wouldn’t admit it. He wants to hold his
job, and with present-day circuses; hot irons or anything like them
are barred. All for one very simple reason besides the humanitarian
qualities. Jungle animals cost about eight times as much to-day as they
did twenty or twenty-five years ago. No circus owner is going to mar a
thousand-dollar bill if he can help it--and hot irons produce scars.
Which represents the business side of animal training as it exists
to-day. There are two reasons; one being that the whole fabric of
the circus business had changed in the last score of years from the
low-browed “grifting” owner and his “grifting,” thieving, fighting
personnel to a new generation of men who have higher ideals and who
have realized that the circus is as much of an institution as a
dry-goods store or the post-office department.
[Illustration: IN THE STEEL ARENA.]
[Illustration: A TIGER BEING TRAINED TO RIDE HORSEBACK.]
Where the canvasmen and “roughnecks” and “razorbacks,” the laborers of
the circus, once were forced to sleep beneath the wagons, or at best
upon makeshift bunks, they now have sanitary berths, car porters, and
sheets and pillow cases. Where they once ate the left-overs of stores;
stale bread, old meat, and “puffed” canned goods, they now have food
that is far better than that served in the United States Army. Where
they formerly were the victims of hundred per cent. loan sharks,
feeding upon them like so many human leeches; forcing them to pay
double prices for every commodity and bit of clothing, and practically
at the mercy of brutal bosses, their lot has been bettered until there
is now at least one circus where the lot superintendent never allows
his men to be commanded without a prefix unknown in a great many
business institutions. He doesn’t swear at them, for instance, when he
orders the tents strengthened against a possible blow. Instead, it is:
“All right, _gentlemen_, take up them guy ropes!”
When the weather is foul, and the circus lot is hip-deep in mud, when
men have struggled to their utmost and can go no longer on their own
power, he doesn’t brace them with bootleg whisky. Instead, he keeps
a man on the pay roll whose job is to laugh and sing in such times
as this--the superintendent knowing full well that one laugh begets
another, that singing engenders singing, and that the psychological
value of that laughing man is worth barrels of booze. It has saved the
show more times than one!
Just as conditions have improved with the human personnel of the
circus, so have they progressed in the menagerie. The circus animal
trainer of to-day is not chosen for his brutality, or his cunning, or
his so-called bravery. He is hired because he has studied and knows
animals--even to talking their various “languages!” There are few
real animal trainers who cannot gain an answer from their charges,
talking to them as the ordinary person talks to a dog and receiving
as intelligent attention. It is by this method that cat animals are
trained for the most part, it being about the only way, outside of
catnip, in which they can be rewarded.
In that last word comes the whole explanation of the theory of
present-day animal training, a theory of rewards. Animal men have
learned that the brute isn’t any different from the human; the surest
way to make him work is to pay him for his trouble. In the steel arena
to-day, the same fundamentals exist as in any big factory, or business
house, or office. The animals are just so many hired hands. When they
do their work, they get their pay envelope--and they know it. Beyond
this lies, however, another fundamental principle, by which in the
last score or so of years the whole animal-training system has been
revolutionized. The present-day trainer doesn’t cow the animal or
make it afraid of him. On the contrary, the first thing he does is to
conquer all fear and make friends with the beast!
A study of jungle animals has taught him that they exist through fear;
that the elephant fears, and therefore hates the chimpanzee, the
gorilla and any other member of the big ape tribes that can attack
from above, and therefore, simply through instinct, will kill any of
these beasts at the first opportunity. In like manner does the hyena
or the zebra fear the lion, the tiger fear the elephant, the leopard
fear the python. It has taken little deduction to find that with this
fear, hatred is inevitably linked, and that if an animal fears a
trainer, it also hates him and will “get” him at the first opportunity.
Therefore, the first thing to be eliminated is not fear on the part of
the trainer, but on the part of the animal! I am no animal trainer.
Yet, as I say, I’ve occupied some mighty close quarters with every form
of jungle beast. Nor was it bravery. It was simply because I knew the
great cats wouldn’t be afraid of me, and that, having nothing to fear,
they would simply ignore me. Which happened.
Perhaps the best example of the change in training tactics lies in the
story of a soft-hearted, millionaire circus owner who is somewhat of
a crank about his animals being well treated. One day, several years
ago, we happened to be together at a vaudeville theater, in which an
old-time trainer was exhibiting a supposed “trained” monkey band. The
audience seemed to enjoy the affair; but there were two who didn’t. All
for the reason that we could see the cruelty of it.
The unfortunate monkeys were tied to their chairs. To their arms were
attached invisible piano wires which ran to a succession of pulleys
above and thence to the wings, where they were pulled and jerked by an
assistant to create the illusion that the beasts were obeying commands.
By an elaborate network of wires, the monkeys were made to raise horns,
which also were tied to their hands, and apparently play them. Time
after time, as he watched, the circus owner snorted his displeasure,
and, at last, the act finished, rose from his chair and sought the
stage entrance.
“Swell act you got!” he announced to the owner. “What do you want for
it? You know, I own a circus; I’d kind of like to have that layout in
the kid show.”
It was the beginning of a series of bickerings, which ended in the
purchase of the act--why, I could not quite understand. So I asked the
reason. The eccentric little owner waved a hand.
“Going to have it in my show.”
“But with those wires--that’s torture, Boss!”
“Now, nix, Kid! Nix. Wait till I’ve got my bill of sale.”
Incidentally, when he received that, the new owner of the monkey band
gave to the old-time trainer a tongue lashing as artistic as anything
I ever heard, a little masterpiece on cruelty, on the cowardice of the
human, and on decency in general. Following which, he bundled up his
newly purchased monkeys, together with the properties which went with
the act, and took them to winter quarters.
The next day I went out there with him. The monkeys were in their
chairs, apparently waiting for something exceedingly important. No
wires were visible. At a signal, an attendant ran forward with a small
table, upon which were heaped the band instruments which at one time
had represented so much torture to the little prisoners. Instantly
there was chattering and excitement. The simians leaped from their
chairs, scrambled toward the table, grasped a band instrument apiece
and ran back to their places, each holding the musical apparatus tight
to his lips and producing faint sounds that bore the resemblance of
music! Yet the cruelty was gone! The wires had vanished! The monkeys
were doing all this of their own accord and actually taking a delight
in it! Like a pleased boy, the little circus owner walked to one of the
simians and, against the monkey’s squealing protests, took away his
horn.
“There,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, “that’s all you have
to do.”
The mouthpiece of the horn had been refashioned overnight. Extending
slightly outward from the interior was a metal standard bearing a thin
reed; which would sound at the slightest suction, while just beyond
this, at a point which would necessitate some effort on the part of the
monkey to reach it, was an ordinary piece of old-fashioned, striped
stick candy! When the monkey sucked on the candy, the reed sounded. By
such a simple method had cruelty been changed to pleasure!
The same thing holds true for practically every other animal act.
Instead of making animals pretend to work because they are afraid, they
merely work for wages now. For years, in the old days, trainers had
kicked and mauled and beaten a slow-thinking, lunk-headed hippopotamus
in an effort to make him perform. It was impossible. The hip neither
fought nor obeyed. It didn’t have enough sense to know that it could
escape punishment by doing a few tricks. Then, with the coming of the
newer régime into the circus business, the effort was discontinued. For
years the big river hog merely wallowed in his trough. Then, one day,
an animal trainer slanted his head and stood for a long time in thought.
“Believe I’ll work that hip,” he announced. And a week later, the
miracle happened!
“Ladies-s-s-s-s-s and gentlemen-n-n-n” came the bawling outcry of
the official announcer, “I take great pleasuah in announcing to you
a featuah not on the program, a race between a swift-footed human
being-g-g-g and a real, living, breathing hippopotamus-s-s, or sweating
be-hemoth of Holy Writ. Wa-a-a-tch them!”
Into the hippodrome track from the menagerie connection came the
trainer, running at a fair gait, while striving his best, seemingly,
to outpace him, was a goggle-eyed hippopotamus, trotting as swiftly
as his wobbly avoirdupois would permit. All the way around they went,
the hippopotamus gaining for an instant, then the trainer taking the
lead again, finally passing once more into the menagerie. The audience
applauded delightedly. It was the first time it ever had seen a trained
hippopotamus. Nor had it noticed the fact that, about fifty yards in
advance of the racing pair, was a menagerie attendant, also running.
The important thing about this person was that he carried a bucket of
bran mash, and the hippopotamus knew that it was for him! He wasn’t
racing the trainer, he was merely following a good meal; the old, old
story of the donkey and the ear of corn!
Likewise the pig which you’ve seen squealing in the wake of the clown
in the circus. The secret? Simply that His Hoglets has been taken from
his mother at birth and raised on a bottle. His feeding has been timed
so that it comes during circus hours. The pig follows the clown because
he knows he’s going to get a square meal. At certain places in the
circuit of the big top the clown pauses and gives him a few nips from
the bottle. Then he goes on again and the pig runs squealing after.
Simple, isn’t it?
In the same manner is the “follow goose” trained. The person he trails
has food, and the goose knows he’s going to get it. Likewise the pigs
which you’ve seen “shooting the chutes.”
A pig isn’t supposed to have much intelligence. Perhaps he hasn’t--but
you can have a trained-pig act all your own very easily.
Simply build a pen leading to a set of stairs which lead in turn to a
chute, the chute traveling down into another closely netted enclosure.
In this enclosure put a bucket of favorite pig food. Then turn the hogs
loose and let then make their own deductions.
First of all, the pigs will try to reach the food by going through the
netting. That’s impossible. So at last they turn to the runway, go up
the steps, hesitate a long while, then finally slide down the chute and
get what they’re after. Then--here’s the strange part of it: after a
week or so, remove the food. The pigs will keep on shooting the chutes
just the same. By some strange form of animal reasoning, the pleasure
of food has become associated with that exercise of sliding down that
incline. Like a dog that gains a form of stomachic satisfaction from
the sight of food, so do the pigs derive a certain amount of pleasure
from going where the food ought to be! And they’ll shoot the chutes
for you as often as you please. Particularly if you feed them directly
after it’s done!
In fact, the system of rewards and payment for work holds true through
every form of trained animal life. Sugar for dogs, carrots for
elephants, fish for seals, stale bread for the polar bears, a bit of
honey or candy for the ordinary species of bear, pieces of apple or
lumps of sugar for horses; every animal has his reward, for which he’ll
work a hundred times harder than ever he did in the old and almost
obsolete days of fear. Even lions, tigers and leopards have their
likes, but with them the payment comes in a different fashion.
Jungle cats are primeval in their instincts. They’re unable to control
themselves at the sight of food, and a few strips of meat distributed
in the training den might lead to a fight. Therefore the new style of
trainer has a different method. He talks to the cats!
Nor is that so difficult as it sounds. A short association with animals
and one easily can learn the particular intonation by which they
express pleasure. With the lion, this takes form in a long drawn-out
meow of satisfaction; with the leopard and the tiger it is evinced by
purring, as with house cats. The trainer simply practices an imitation
of these sounds until he masters them, with the result that he is
almost invariably answered by the beast when he emits them! The animal
seems to understand that the trainer is seeking to convey the fact that
he is pleased, and the beast appears pleased also. As to the reward
extraordinary, there is the joy of joys--catnip!
To a house cat, catnip is a thing of ecstasy. To a jungle cat it holds
as much allurement as morphine to a dope user, or whisky to a drunkard.
A catnip ball and the world immediately becomes rosy; the great cats
roll in it, toss it about their cages, purr and arch their backs, all
in a perfect frenzy of delight. Therefore, when they do their work,
they get their catnip. When they don’t work they’re simply docked their
week’s wages; that’s all.
Old principles, naturally, and perhaps all the more efficacious for
their age. In fact, there is one circus in the West which regularly
depends upon this age-worn idea of food to save itself in wet weather.
It possesses one of the largest and strongest elephants existent in the
United States, an animal capable of pulling any of the show’s wagons
from hub-deep mud with but little effort. There is only one trouble.
When Nature made that elephant, it put concrete where the brains should
be. Training is next to impossible. The elephant simply doesn’t seem
able to assimilate a command. Which worries the circus not at all.
When bad weather comes, they simply bring out “Old Bonehead” and hitch
him with a rope harness to whichever wagon happens to be stuck. Then
a workman takes his position slightly in front of the beast, with a
bucketful of carrots, and practices a little animal Coueism. He holds
out a carrot. The elephant reaches for it but can’t quite achieve his
object. Whereupon he takes a step forward--and drags the wagon with
him. Which forms the end of that particular vehicle’s troubles. He is
unhitched and taken to the next scene of difficulty. For every wagon a
carrot, and the circus counts it rather cheap motive power at that!
However, the training of animals does not mean that they’re simply
given food, in return for which, by some magical process, they realize
that they are to do certain work. Far from it. It is a long, patient
progress, in which the trainer, if he is a good one, grits his teeth
to hold his temper and smiles many and many a time when he would
like to swear. He has three jobs which must be synchronized into one
objective--to teach the animal that there is nothing to fear from this
strange human who has suddenly made his entry into the beast’s life,
to plant certain routines into the beast’s mind, and to place there at
the same time the knowledge that, for doing these things, the animal
is to be rewarded. But there is this consolation: once a single trick
is learned, the whole avenue is unlocked; and the way to other stunts
made easier. Here and here alone is the whip used, but for the most
part it is only the light, cheap affair which once adorned that ancient
vehicle, the buggy.
The lessons start in much the same manner in which those of a human
child begin; the primary object being to accustom the charges to the
fact that they are going to school. And so the lion tamer merely takes
his position in the center of the arena and calls for the attendants to
release the animals from their permanent cages.
Often the lesson consists of nothing more than that. The beasts have
become accustomed to mankind through seeing them every day in the
menagerie and through being fed by them. Therefore they catalogue them
as merely other animals which are harmless and upon which the beasts
themselves depend for a livelihood. Again is the road to the brain
opened through the path to the stomach!
However, there also are times when the cats seem to realize that they
no longer are protected by intervening bars, and the old instincts of
fright and self-preservation overcome them. One by one they attempt
to rush their trainer. The answer is a swift, accurately placed blow
of the whip, usually on the nostrils. In force it corresponds to
a sharp slap on the lips, such as happens to more than one child,
stinging it for the moment and causing it to recoil. Unless the beast
is intractable, an inbred or a “bad actor,” about two of these blows
are sufficient to teach the animal its first combined lesson: that a
whip hurts, that the man in the arena commands that whip but, most
important of all, he uses it only as a means of self-protection. The
good trainer only strikes an animal to break up an attack; he has a
specified task, to make the beast respect the whip, but not to fear it.
After the first few minutes, the trainer can sit down in the center of
the arena and wait in peace. His charges have ceased attacking and now
are merely roaming the big enclosure, accustoming themselves to the
larger space of their quarters and assuring themselves that they have
nothing to fear. So ends the first lesson.
After which comes the second and most important period of all. The
animal already has learned three things, that the trainer will not
hurt him unless the animal tries to hurt the trainer, that the whip
is something that can sting and it is best to keep away from it, and
that there will be a reward for doing what the trainer desires, and
that, taken all in all, he’s a pretty good sort of a being after all.
Therefore, the trainer selects one beast at a time and falls into a
routine. He cracks his whip just behind the beast, not striking the
animal, but close enough to make his charge move away from it. At the
same time, he keeps repeating his rote:
“Seats, Rajah! Seats--seats!”
Which the beast doesn’t understand at all. But by “crowding,” by the
constant repetition of that command, and by desisting with the whip
when the animal moves in the right direction and cracking it to hold
him from the wrong course, the trainer gradually works the cat to its
pedestal. Once this lesson is implanted in the mind of the beast,
the whole door to a trained act is unlocked, for everything else is
accomplished in the same manner.
More than once I have happened into a menagerie house to find the arena
full of cat animals and a trainer seemingly nowhere about. The animals
were doing as they pleased, some lolling in the spots of sunlight which
came from the high windows, others playing, still others merely pacing.
It was as though a recess had been called at school and the teacher had
departed. Instead, however, he was hiding!
Hiding and watching the animals with hawk-like eagerness, as, left to
themselves, they followed the dictates of their own likes and dislikes.
It was not a recess; on the contrary, it was one of the most important
features of present-day animal training, that of allowing the animals
themselves to choose their own acts! In other words, the trainer was
playing the part of a hidden observer, watching his tawny charges, and
from his unseen point of vantage learning their true natures and the
things which they liked best to do.
Some animals are natural climbers and balancers; others are not. Weeks
could be wasted in an effort to teach a beast to walk a tightrope,
for instance, when the power of balance simply was not in his brain.
So the trainer of to-day, being a believer in efficiency, allows his
animals to volunteer for the various services of the performing arena.
During the recess time, in which the animals are left to their own
resources, their every mannerism is catalogued. In their play, for
instance, it may be found that two lions or two tigers will box each
other in mock fighting; two pals of the feline race that have selected
each other as playmates. Naturally, there is fierce growling and a
sprinkling of flying fur. The trainer notes it all, and when the show
goes on the road, the audience gets a thrill out of two great cats
which leap at each other in a seeming battle of death. For the trainer
has taken advantage of this play instinct and made it a part of the
show. The audience doesn’t know that the big beasts are growling and
hissing in good humor, and wouldn’t believe it if the trainer announced
the fact.
Another animal will be found to have a love for climbing and for
balancing himself about the thin rails of the arena. This is the beast
which is turned into the “tightrope walking tiger” or the “Leonine
Blondin.” Another will be a humorist, cavorting about in comical
fashion, and he becomes the “only-y-y-y, living-g-g-g, breathing-g-g-g
cat clown in existence.” In fact, the animal trainer has learned
one great truth, that animals have tempers, likes, dislikes, moods,
frailties and mannerisms just as a human has them, and that the
easiest way to present a pleasing act is to take advantage of the
natural “histrionic talent” of the beast. For instance, on one of the
big shows was an “untamable lion.” At the very sight of the trainer,
he would hiss and claw and roar and appear obsessed with a mad desire
to eat that trainer alive at the first opportunity. His act was a
constant thing of cracking whips, of shouts, of barking revolver shots,
and of scurrying attendants outside the arena, on the alert every
instant for the leap of death. Old Duke, to tell the truth, seemed one
of the fiercest beasts that ever went into a steel arena. His every
mannerism carried the hint of death; he hated humans; you could see the
malevolent glare in his eyes, the deadly threat of naked teeth, the--
By the way, did you ever play with a dog that mocked fierceness? A dog
that growled and barked and pretended every moment that he was going to
take off an arm or a leg, while you, in turn, pretended just as hard
as that you were fighting for your very life? Of course, I shouldn’t
reveal circus secrets, but I once spent half an hour with Old Duke in a
cage so small that he slapped me in the face with his tail every time
he turned round, and I didn’t even have the customary buggy whip!
The explanation is simply the fact that it was discovered early in
Duke’s training days that he was an animal humorist. Pompous appearing,
dignified in mien, yet possessed with a funny streak, which the trainer
soon recognized and realized, Old Duke played his rôle so excellently
that upon his death a short time ago, a large newspaper published an
editorial regarding him, and the laugh that he, the lion, had on the
“smart” human beings who had watched him!
“If Old Duke only had possessed a sleeve,” said the editorial, “he
would have placed many a snicker in it during his long and useful show
days. For Duke had a mission, that of showing at least a few persons
who really understood him and who knew, that we who call ourselves
humans are only super-egoists, that because we can talk, and build
edifices and go scurrying about this ant hill we call life, we think
we are the only beings existent who possess a brain. That was Duke’s
mission, to prove, after all, that we are only wonderful because we
think we are wonderful, that we believe animals are soulless things
because we do not understand them. No doubt there are many Old Dukes
in the animal kingdom, supposedly our inferiors, that go through life
tickling our egoism, and quietly, to themselves, giving us the laugh!”
In the old days of animal training, Duke would have been just a lion
doing routine things, because the trainers of those days didn’t know
enough to realize that animals might possess individuality. But those
days are gone. It is a different deal now; far more acts are suggested
by the animals themselves than by any trainer. The man in circus demand
is the person who knows enough to stand at one side and watch, then
take advantage of what he has seen.
Which explains perhaps a sight many circus-goers have noticed--of
a herd of young elephants romping in the mud of a show-lot, and an
interested group of men standing at one side, cataloguing every
move. Mud makes elephants actors. From a beginning of mud and rain
come the balance artists of the elephant herd, the dancers, the
“hootchie-kootchie” experts, and the comedians. All for the reason that
mud to an elephant is like catnip to a lion or tiger. It is part of an
elephant herd’s routine of health to send it forth into the mire and
rain of a “wet lot” and let the members play like so many tremendous
puppies. And while they play, the trainer observes.
No two do the same thing in the same way; the individuality is as
marked as in the members of any human kindergarten class. The trainer
therefore has simply to pick his “bulls” for the various things he
wants them to do when they have graduated into performers, one to walk
upon his hind legs, another to dance in the ring as he danced in the
happiness of sticky mud, one more to sit on still another’s head, and
so on throughout the routine. There is hardly an elephant act that
has not been first done voluntarily at some time in the antics of a
play-fest in the mud.
However, after learning an elephant’s aptitudes comes the real job,
that of making him know that he is to do these tricks as a part of his
livelihood, and to recognize them by cues. An elephant doesn’t measure
his weight by pounds; he runs to tons, and to teach him the rudiments
of his life-work under canvass is a matter of everything from blocks
and tackle to lifting-cranes.
Combined with one ultra-essential point: the elimination of pain.
There is no braver beast than an elephant, and no greater coward; no
better friend and no worse enemy. Injure an elephant when he is a baby,
combine the thought of pain with the idea of work, and some day it all
will come back in a furious, thundering engine of destruction that not
only wrecks the circus, but signs his own death warrant. Bad elephants
must be killed; and when that happens a circus checks off anything from
$4000 to $10,000 on the wrong side of the ledger.
Therefore, the early training of a pachyderm is a delicate affair.
First of all, the student is led to the “class-room” accompanied by
an older and more experienced “bull.” Then, while the new applicant
for performing honors watches, the older elephant is padded about the
legs and tied; following which the blocks and tackles are pulled taut,
causing the beast to lose its balance and fall on its side, the trainer
meanwhile repeating and re-repeating the “lay-down” command. At the end
of which the performer is allowed to rise and is given a carrot. Time
after time is this done, while the student watches--especially that
part where the feeding comes in. It all has its purpose--to attempt to
fix in the new performer’s mind the fact that, in the first place, this
schooling won’t hurt, and secondly that all a “bull” has to do to earn
a nice, fresh carrot is to have a couple of ropes hooked to his legs
and be pulled over on his side. So quick is the intelligence of some
elephants that instances have been known of the beasts learning their
primary lesson on the first attempt. Others, hampered by fear, have
required a month.
In the same way is every other rudimentary trick taught. The elephant
is shown how to stand on his head by having his trunk pulled under
him and his hind legs raised. After which he receives carrots. The
reverse system is used for teaching him “the hind-leg stand”--and
again the carrots appear. After this, the block and tackle is not a
necessity except as a means of support, while hitherto unused muscles
are strengthened. The animal has learned his alphabet; now it is simply
a matter of putting the letters together, the words themselves being
furnished largely by his own antics.
Incidentally, this new order of things in the training field has led
to a different relationship between the man and the beast. There was
a time when animals were only animals, to be taken from their cages,
pushed through their tricks, then shunted back into their cages and
forgotten. Things are different now. The average menagerie has become
more of an animal hotel, with conveniences. The superintendent must
be a person who has studied not only the beasts themselves, but their
anatomy, in other words, a jungle veterinarian.
The boss of the circus menagerie of to-day doesn’t merely content
himself with seeing that his charges are well fed. By a glance at the
coat of a lion or tiger he can tell whether that beast has indigestion;
ventilation is watched carefully to dispel the ammonia smell of the
cat animals and thereby prevent headaches on the part of the beasts;
teeth are pulled, ingrown toenails doctored, operations performed, and
every disease from rickets to pneumonia treated and cured. And the
fact that man at last has learned that beasts possess temperaments,
individuality, emotions and a good many things that humans brag about
has seemed to place them on a different plane. Where there once was
cruelty there now is often affection, both on the part of the trainer,
and also on that of the animal!
In the Al G. Barnes Circus, in California, for instance, is a great,
sleek-muscled, four hundred-pound tiger, that is ever watching,
watching, his eyes constantly on the crowds about his den, seeking but
one person. At the sight of any blond-haired woman, he rises excitedly,
hurries close to the bars, growling in gruff, yet pleased fashion.
Then, with a second look, he turns and slumps to the floor again. It is
not the person he seeks!
That tiger is a killer. He has murdered four other cat animals, two
lions and two tigers, yet if the woman he awaits should appear, she
could tie a cord string about his neck and lead him around the tent in
perfect safety.
He is one of the few wrestling tigers in captivity. Twice a day for
two years, in the steel arena, his claws unguarded, his great jaws
unmuzzled, this four hundred-pound Bengal wrestled in almost human
fashion with Mabel Stark, the woman who had raised him from cubhood,
and whom he loved with a genuine affection. Once, in a motion picture,
when it was necessary for the “double” of the heroine to appear as
though she were almost killed by a tiger, Mabel Stark took the job.
The tiger leaped and knocked her down. Then, while the cameras ground,
he seemingly crushed her skull in his giant jaws. Yet those who
watched saw that those jaws were closed so carefully, in spite of the
swiftness of their action, that they barely dishevelled the trainer’s
hair.
There came the time when Mabel Stark was called away to become one
of the featured trainers for the combined Ringling Brothers-Barnum
and Bailey Circus, the biggest circus of them all. Mabel Stark is far
better known to-day than she was back in the days with Al G. Barnes.
But with the circus she left behind, that tiger still watches, still
waits and seeks constantly for one woman out of the crowds which daily
throng through the menagerie, rising with hope, then dropping forlornly
again to the floor, while, in the midst of her greater fame, Mabel
Stark smiles and sighs, and talks of how wonderful it would be if she
could only have her wrestling tiger!
It’s only one instance of hundreds. Up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, at
the winter quarters of the Barnum show, lives Captain “Dutch” Ricardo,
“the man of a thousand scars.” There was a time when they called
“Cap” the biggest fool in the animal business--for “Cap” was one of
the pioneers of the newer methods of animal training. It was he, for
instance, who once walked into the office of H. H. Tammen, then owner
of the Sells-Floto Circus, and made him a proposition.
“I understand,” he said, “that you’ve got a bunch of bad cats. Been
beaten, ain’t they?”
“Yep,” came the answer. “Just about ruined too. That idiot I had got
’em so flighty they’ll kill anybody that goes into the arena with ’em.”
“I’ll fix ’em up for you,” announced “Cap,” laconically. “Say the word
and I’ll go out there and start in on ’em.”
The circus owner swallowed quickly then reached for a liability
contract.
“Er--just sign this first,” he announced, and “Cap” signed, releasing
the circus from any possible damages for his death. Then together they
went to winter quarters, Ricardo to make his first effort at training,
Tammen to see a new trainer get killed.
“Want any help?” he asked.
“Nope--just two kitchen chairs.”
“Kitchen chairs? What for?”
“To train ’em with.”
Whereupon “Cap” got his chairs and a buggy whip. Then he ordered one
lion into the arena, where he awaited it.
The lion took one look and sprang. Midway in the air, it struck
something, roared in victorious fashion, then settled to chew it to
pieces. But it wasn’t a man--it was that chair. He disentangled himself
and leaped again, only to tangle himself with the second chair which
“Cap” had tossed in his path. A third time, while again Ricardo broke
the leap with the first chair which he had retrieved while the lion
was breaking away from the second; then the cat paused to look his new
antagonist over. So far he hadn’t been hurt at all. Merely foiled. Here
was some one who could outwit him, and who really had him at his mercy,
who didn’t beat him, but who, instead, talked and purred and meowed
continually in friendly fashion. The lion didn’t leap again.
One by one the whole group was introduced to its new trainer. Not once
was a gun fired. Not once was a cat struck, other than a sharp tap with
that buggy whip. That season the “hopeless” act once more went on the
road, and “Cap” Ricardo worked it!
In fact, “Cap” is a man of individual theories. Just as his kitchen
chair was an idea of his own, so there are others.
“I’ll stick my head in any lion’s mouth on earth,” he says. “But,” with
a wink, “I got a trick about it. Always chew tobacco, see? If the lion
should happen to close down, I’d just let that tobacco go in his mouth.
Ever notice how you’ll open your jaws sudden-like when you’ve got hold
o’ something that tastes bad? Huh? Well, it’d be the same way with a
lion. He’d turn loose and I’d take my head out.”
Which is an optimistic manner in which to look at things. The
billing of “Cap” as “the man of a thousand scars” is only a slight
exaggeration. He possesses them by the hundreds, for “Cap” is a
specialist on undoing the misdeeds of others.
“It’s just this here old principle of red-hot coals, or coals of fire,
or whatever you call ’em,” he explains. “Now, for instance, if you hit
a man that’s tryin’ to be good to you, you’re goin’ to feel bad about
it, ain’t you? Well, a cat, when he’s clawing you up--he knows what
he’s doin’. Don’t ever get it in your head that he don’t. Particularly
a tiger cat. I always did like tiger cats better’n I liked lion cats,
at that. ’Course, lots of trainers will tell you different, but I’ve
seen ’em all; I’ve been among the slums and I’ve been among the
aristocrats, and what I claim is, the lions ain’t the king of beasts.
But, be that as it may, a cat knows what he’s doing. And when he finds
out he’s done a friend dirt, ain’t he goin’ to be sorry about it and do
his best to make up? That’s my theory, and it works out too.”
Incidentally, one of these little coals of fire took shape one day
while “Cap” was standing on the ballyhoo stand of a circus sideshow, a
lion by his side. Inadvertently, he poked the lion in an eye, and the
lion in turn bit off the middle finger of “Cap’s” right hand.
“But he didn’t mean to,” says “Cap”. “Figure yourself how surprised a
guy gets when he bumps his face into a door in the dark. He never meant
it.”
Which may sound as an unusual example. To a certain extent it is, for
“Cap” and his theories have an outstanding place in the show world, the
surprising thing about them being the fact that they have worked out
to such an extent that he “breaks” a great many of the animal acts for
the biggest circus in the world. However, there are other instances of
affection between trainer and animal, almost as remarkable.
Out on a ranch in Colorado live a man and a woman who once were
featured on the billboards of every city in the country. He was a
menagerie superintendent, she a trainer of lions, tigers and elephants.
But they troupe no more.
The circus does not represent to them what it once did. There seems
a certain bitterness about it, a grimness which they are unable to
dispel, and so they remain away. The elephant which they raised
together from a three-year-old “punk” to one of the really great
performers among pachyderms in America is dead, felled by volley after
volley of steel-jacketed bullets during a rampage at Salina, Kansas,
several years ago, in which he all but wrecked the menagerie and
endangered the lives of hundreds of persons.
Loneliness on the part of the elephant for his old trainers is commonly
accredited for his “badness.” But the circus had no other recourse;
there were human lives to guard and only one thing was possible, to
slay the maddened beast before it, in turn, became a slayer. But that
argument doesn’t go with his former trainers.
“They surely could have found some way of holding him quiet until we
got there,” is their plaint, “they just didn’t understand him! If they
had even told him that we were coming, he’d have quieted down. He just
wanted us, and we weren’t there, and he went out of his head for a
while. If they’d only penned him up in the cars and then wired us, we’d
have come; we’d have gotten there somehow!”
In answer to which the circus points to pictures of wrecked wagons,
smashed ticket boxes, torn side walling, and overturned animal dens--in
vain. The trainers can’t accept the argument.
“The circus wouldn’t be the same--without Snyder,” is their reply, and
the big tops go traveling on without two stellar performers.
A similar incident came in Texas, during the necessary killing of
another elephant on the same show, which had become maddened through
“_must_,” and was virtually insane. He had torn the menagerie almost to
shreds, injured one man, and was holding a whole town at bay. And while
circus men hastened for army rifles, the executive staff struggled with
a woman who strove by every means of feminine aggressiveness to break
from their grasp, and go to that elephant.
“Let me go, you idiots!” she screamed in hysterical fashion. “I can
handle him! I’m not afraid--let me go! Let me go!”
She had trained the elephant for two years, and it had obeyed her every
command. With any other pachyderm, she would have understood that the
natural condition of “must” brings insanity, and that, when in this
condition, it recognizes no one, understands no command, and knows
nothing save the wildest sort of maniacal antagonism toward everything,
animate or inanimate, which may come into its path. But her faith in
this particular beast had transgressed even beyond good sense. It was
necessary to drag her from the circus grounds by main force before the
first shot could be fired at the unfortunate beast!
Nor does the love of animals always confine itself to the trainer.
Workmen of the circus are shadowy beings; few persons know whence they
come, what their life before they drifted into the nomadic, grim life
of the “razorback,” the “canvasman” or the “big top roughneck.” There
are stories by the scores in the unshaven beings who sleep about the
lot in the afternoons; stories of men whose finer cast of features
tells of a time when all was not work and long hours, hints of hidden
things in the shadows; they are men who seldom write a letter or
receive one. And they are lonely.
Human companionship often does not appeal to them. But the friendship
of animals is a different thing. Perhaps it is because they can talk
to these beasts during the long hours of the night, as the circus
train rocks along on its journey from town to town, knowing that their
confidences will not be revealed. Nevertheless, the fact remains that
more than one workman has been left behind in an alien burial ground,
with no close human friend to know of his death, and with only a lion
or tiger or elephant to watch for a companion who never again appears.
More than once also I have seen laborers of the circus volunteer to
“sit up” with a dying orang-outang or chimpanzee, doing their work by
day, remaining awake at night and nursing the beast in the hours of
darkness; at last, lonely again, tears in their eyes, to shuffle on
out to their hard, grim, dangerous labors, while a still form remains
behind, to be buried behind the big top, after the matinée. It was such
a case as this that formed a story which a certain circus owner likes
to tell, as he explains one of the reasons why the workmen of his show
are better treated than they were in other days, and furnished with
more conveniences and accommodations. For in this case it was the man
and not the animal that suffered tragedy.
No one around the show even remembers his name. They only know that his
loyalty and devotion in a strange friendship caused a soft-hearted
circus owner to become far more interested in the workmen than ever
before, almost to the point of sentimental solicitude. The recipient of
that loyalty, incidentally, was rather grotesque,--Bon, the baby hippo,
or, in circus language, “the blood-sweating behemoth of Holy Writ.”
Four men carried Bon to the show when he arrived, a fat
aimless-appearing baby river hog from the Nile Country. The press
agents properly exploited him. Which Bon didn’t seem to relish
whatever, for all that the baby hippopotamus did was whine. One day the
menagerie superintendent received an inspiration.
“That hip’s lonesome,” he announced to an assistant. “Round up one of
them there ‘roughnecks’ and put him in with it--see if that does any
good.”
The “roughneck,” known only as Mike, was obtained, and paid a few
dollars extra a week for the discomfort of sleeping in the same cage
with a hippopotamus. A silent, taciturn individual, he had told nothing
of himself when he came on the show; his name had been plainly a
makeshift, and the circus, with other things to think about, had made
no inquiries.
The baby hippo ceased to whine. Gradually, it was noticed that the
“hippopotamus nurse,” was taking more and more interest in his charge,
pilfering bread for him from the cookhouse, or cutting fresh grass
from around the circus lot, when he should have been resting during
matinée hours. A month passed. The hippo seemed cured.
“Guess you can go back to your bunk now,” said the menagerie
superintendent.
The “hippo nurse” nodded. But the next morning, the superintendent
found him again in the behemoth’s den.
“Just thought I’d sneak out an’ see how he was gettin’ along,” came the
explanation. “An’ he was whinin’--so I stuck with him.”
The superintendent winked--to himself. Two dollars a week extra is a
fortune to a circus roughneck.
“Nix on that stuff,” came finally; “the pay’s stopped.”
“Yeh. I know it.”
And Mike continued to sleep in the hippopotamus den--without pay.
Another month passed. Two more after that. The circus rounded into its
trip down the west coast, for its final effort at possible dollars
before the cold weather closed in. Then, one night, the emergencies
suddenly clamped hard. There had come a shrieking cry from the shrouded
wagons atop the flat cars, the warning of that feared thing of the
circus:
“Fire! F-i-r-e!”
[Illustration: FEED A HIPPOPOTAMUS AND HE’LL DO THE REST.]
[Illustration: BON, THE BABY HIPPO, FOR WHOM A MAN GAVE HIS LIFE.]
Hurrying men “spotted” the cage where a red glow had shown for an
instant, then faded--the hippopotamus den, evidently set afire by a
spark from the engine. The train stopped. Workmen and performers rushed
forward.
The den was dripping with water, evidently carried from the circus
water-cart just ahead. A bucket lay beside the cage. But Mike the
“hippo nurse” was not to be found.
Then came a shout. They had discovered him by the right of way,
his neck broken; in the fight for his grotesque comrade’s life, he
evidently had slipped on the top of the den and fallen from the train.
Death had been instantaneous.
But that last bucket of water had extinguished the fire.
CHAPTER II
TRAMPING IT TO CAGEDOM
All the romance about a circus isn’t confined to its sprawled tents,
its beauty and rhythm of performance, its life of the padroom and
dressing tents, its screaming calliope, bringing up the rear of the
parade. Nor does it always concern its people, romantic as their lives
may be. Oftentimes there is another angle, of which the public hears
little; even the sideshow lecturer doesn’t touch upon it. That angle
concerns the animals.
All because there are often animals with a past in the circus, which
have come to it by far different means than the customary ones. Beasts
that greet the little seaport towns of the coast countries with strange
yowlings and excitements, which only the circus people understand.
Those animals might not even recognize a jungle. But they recognize
the sea--often it means the happiest home they ever knew, a home to
which they went as babies, forgetting the natural habitat where they
had come into the world, and gaining their impressions of life from the
deck of a rolling vessel, with every member of the crew for a friend
and playmate. The next time, for instance, that you see one of the
great apes, and notice a strange, wistful expression in his eyes, don’t
fancy that he is grieving for his jungles. Rather, he may be longing
for the fo’c’stle of a tramp steamer wallowing in the great waves, the
phosphorescence of a tropical sea gleaming at the prow and wake, the
sailors sprawled about and this great ape a seaman also, counting it
all as his home and his happiness.
For the tiger, the lion and the other members of the cat tribe, for
most of the elephants and for practically all the ruminants or hay
eaters which find their way into the menagerie of a circus, there is
an organized business which provides the channels by which wild beasts
become the tamed, or at least, the occupants of zoölogical cages.
A business in itself, with branches in various parts of the world,
training quarters, shipping facilities and all the other necessities
for the capture and handling of anything from a secretary bird to a
rhinoceros; this form of enterprise, conducted principally by Hagenbeck
of Hamburg, forms the principal means of providing the hundreds upon
hundreds of wild animals which go to make up the zoölogical collections
of the country. But opposed to this is a different form of entry in
which the lines are not laid in such regular fashion, and by means
of which some of the greatest animal personalities of circusdom have
found their way to America--those off-course wanderers of the sea,
the West-coasters or tramp steamers which rarely touch port in America
without making an addition to this country’s menageries. This portion
of the cargo never appears on the records. It’s a sideline which has
yielded many a story of animal importation, and without which, in all
probability, some of the most widely known giant apes that ever have
been in captivity still might be wandering the jungles.
Apes, the chimpanzee, the orang-outang, the gorilla, look upon bars
and cages in the same light that a human being views them. They mean
prison. It is only when a friendly relationship has been established,
and the beast knows that incarceration is not a form of punishment,
that close captivity is accepted. Therefore, these beasts cannot be
simply taken from the jungle, slapped into a cage, and brought to the
circus. More, they cannot endure the cold weather so often attendant
upon a landing upon the eastern coast. The result is that the Pacific
Coast is the natural landing point for these animals, and their means
of entrance in the majority of cases, the captain or first mate of a
tramp steamer, augmenting his earnings by bringing new specimens of
apedom to captivity. Where the tramps touch on foreign shores, there
the natives know that a jungle animal, and particularly one that can
be given the run of the ship, is a thing desired. With the result that
rarely does one of these tramps start, America bound, without an extra
passenger; which comes to know the ship as home, the sailors as friends
and the sea as a place to love. That memory lingers.
A number of years ago, I happened to walk into an unpretentious little
“bird store” in Portland, Oregon. A bell, attached to the door, jingled
in the rear, whence came the noise of a hammer, pounding against tin. A
voice sounded, guttural, yet kindly.
“See who it is, Bill.”
A cooing, squealing call responded. Then, while I gaped, there came
from behind the partition, walking sloppily erect, a great, bowlegged,
long-armed orang-outang, which trundled behind the counter, rested
one arm upon it, gazed at me for a moment, handed me a package of
birdseed from a shelf, then with excited cries and cooing ran behind
the partition again. A moment later, a grinning German, hammer still in
hand, came forth.
“He vould nott be happy unless he answered dot bell!” he announced.
Which was fine for Bill. But, as the store-owner confessed laughingly,
it was a little hard on the customers, especially those who didn’t
know that Bill was amiable and harmless. His response to my entrance
had been an extraordinarily tame affair; he usually jumped to the top
of the counter, slapped his hands excitedly as if in an effort to
understand what the customer wanted, then with a wild swoop descended
to the floor again, seized a paper sack, filled it with sunflower seed
and passed it forth. If the customer became frightened, the old bird
storekeeper was very, very sorry. But Bill must have his joke!
For Bill, to his old German master, was all but human. Before his bird
store days, the owner had sailed the seas as the captain of a tramp
freighter, and his ship never had been without a simian mascot. Then
he had taken to land and as a present, his former first mate, now
the Captain, had brought him, after nine months of wandering about
the ocean, this orang-outang. Bill had been one of the crew aboard
ship. Now he became one of the proprietors of the bird store, for he
was something more than an orang-outang to the owner of the little
“emporium”--he represented the life that the old skipper loved, and
if the customers didn’t like the association of the strange, grinning
creature, that was just too bad. The owner liked him and that was
enough.
So there they lived together, Bill and the Old Man, as he was known.
Several years went by. Then one day, the old first mate came for a
visit to his one time captain.
A scream sounded from the orang-outang. In the years which he had spent
in the bird store Bill had learned to walk erect, but now, with swift
jungle leaps, he ran toward the visitor, crawled up into his arms and
clung to him, cooing and chattering. During the hours of the visit, he
would not be separated, but at last the parting came.
“Stay there,” said the former first mate, “I’ll be back.”
They never met again. But those who knew the store told of a big
orang-outang who sat for hours each day, watching the boats of the
Columbia River which flowed behind the store; the whistle of a vessel,
signaling for a bridge upstream would cause him to leap with excitement
and hurry for the door that he might wait and wait until the ship had
gone downstream. But he did not grieve. Apparently it was enough to
watch the ships which represented the life whence he had come; he was
happy in merely looking at them, as was the old Captain. Persons who
knew the store told of the twain of them sitting on the steps together,
the old salt’s arms about the shoulders of the orang-outang, and both
of them looking out toward the river, where traveled the boats which
represented the life which both once had lived. Then the proprietor
died. The orang-outang went to a circus--and to a cage, away from his
visions of the sea. He died of grief within three months!
Strange, but the sea seems to have a fascination for
simians--sentimental for the most part; sometimes otherwise. One of the
money-making enterprises of tramp steamers which ply the West Coast
is the landing of rhesus monkeys from South America, brought to this
country in huge crates containing sometimes as high as fifty of the
small creatures. It is inevitable that now and then a seaman should
take a fancy to one of the monkeys and, taking him from the cage, make
a ship’s pet of him. Naturally, it is a gradual affair, the seaman
watching his charge until he has become familiar with his surroundings,
and devoid of fright. This little diversion, however, in one instance
led to tragedy.
The one simian which had gained the run of the ship evidently believed
the same sort of life would be good for the rest of his comrades. He
returned to the crate where, more by accident than anything else, he
managed to release the latch which held the crate door. A moment later,
the hold was swarming with monkeys.
This would have been all right, except for the intervention of another
ship’s mascot, a large bull dog, which happened into the hold about
that time, saw the strange occupants, and began an excited chase. The
monkeys moved for the deck, scampering across it and at last bringing
up, huddled and excited, upon a life raft. Then one of them glanced
below and saw the sea beneath, rushing past as the ship moved on its
journey.
He chattered and gesticulated. The others crowded about him, dazed,
hypnotized, it seemed, by the movement of the water. Evidently the
same fascination which attacks a person at the edge of a high roof
had come over these tiny animals. A moment more and with a weird cry,
one of the monkeys leaped--to his death in the sea. Then another, and
another and another--before the crew could rescue a single member of
the escaped band, every one of them had yielded to the strange power of
suggestion and had leaped into the ocean, there to struggle wildly for
a moment, then be lost in the swirling wake.
But the lure of the sea, as a general thing, is of a different sort.
Whether it is the movement of the ship, the kindliness of the sailors,
the association of human beings and the knowledge of freedom, little
is known, for simians cannot speak our language. But the certainty
remains that for the animal which has lived on shipboard as a mascot,
the memory remains, pleasantly, appealingly. Several years ago, a
circus was in Seattle, and the menagerie superintendent was approached
by a townsman, offering for sale five red faced apes, a female with
a baby, and three males, one adult, the other two half grown. They
had been landed a week or so before by a tramp steamer, bought as a
speculation by the man who now offered them, and who apparently knew
little of animals or their care. The price was exorbitant and was
refused. The owner persisted that they were unusual specimens, and
that, if the superintendent would only look at them, he would be
attracted sufficiently to pay the price. The superintendent agreed to a
visit--then went back to the circus, grieving that he could not pay the
price. For those apes were being mistreated.
They were incarcerated in an old, dirty barn, lightless, damp, chilly.
The speculator, knowing nothing of simians, believed it necessary to
beat them at every opportunity, and to this end, made his entrance
to the barn, armed with a broom handle which he used to drive the
unfortunate beasts before him. The superintendent was soft-hearted. He
went to the owner and begged for the increase in price necessary--at
last to receive it. Then, that night, he hurried for the shed in which
the apes had suffered, only to be met by the surly announcement of the
speculator that the beasts had slipped past him when he had gone forth
to feed them that evening, and had escaped. It seemed that the episode
had ended. But there was to be a sequel. Four weeks later, in San
Francisco, a sea captain approached the superintendent.
“Want to buy five red faced apes cheap?” he asked.
The circus man nodded in assent and asked the price. The sea captain
scratched his head.
“Darned if I know what they’re worth,” he announced. “Guess I can make
it pretty reasonable though. They didn’t cost me anything. Just came
down from Seattle with a load of lumber. Two days out one of my men
notified me that there was a monkey down in the hold. I thought he’d
been drinking too much and went down to see for myself. Then I decided
that I’d been the one that was doing the drinking. There were five of
’em, scared to death! Three males and a mother and a baby--.” “What’s
that?” The superintendent stared. “Let’s take a look at ’em!”
The captain led the way. Down at the ship, the superintendent found
five apes, now tame and apparently happy in human association. The
seaman waved a hand.
“Haven’t got the slightest idea where they came from. They must’ve
stowed away with the lumber. Still, they’ve been used to people. Scared
of us at first and huddled together and chattered. But when they saw
that we weren’t going to hurt ’em, they came round all right and have
been regular pets.”
The superintendent went forward to an examination--and an
identification, by means of a scar on the right hip of the female. He
asked the captain for his sailing date from Seattle, and found it to
have been early on the morning following the escape of the five apes
from the barn in which they had been cruelly imprisoned. After that the
explanation was obvious.
The animals had been brought to this country on a tramp steamer upon
which their associations had been happy ones. Like all simians they had
come to love the sea, and naturally, with their liberation, they had
turned toward the shipping docks by instinct. In the darkness, they had
clambered aboard the first ship they found, which happened to be this
coastwise freighter. With the result that the circus recovered its red
faced apes, and a sea captain went back to his freighter announcing
that romance wasn’t dead on the blamed old ocean after all!
In fact, romance is very much alive, as far as simians are concerned,
for it is due to the tramp steamer that most of the big apes reach
America alive. There is no more sensitive creature than the chimpanzee
or the orang-outang. Grief, moodiness, sorrow--these things sap the
life of a great ape as surely as any malignant disease; refusing food,
water, the big simian that is captured and brought to America by the
usual methods of caging, too often dies before it ever reaches the
circus. But with the tramp steamer, all is different.
In the first place, the West-Coasters travel for the most part, through
warm climates an essential to the health of the average “big monk.” But
above all things, there is association.
The great apes are usually purchased in their youth and taken aboard
merely as a speculation. An adult ape is worth more than a young one,
with the result that the chimpanzee or the orang-outang often becomes
an occupant of the ship for several years, becoming the mascot and
the friend of every man aboard. He runs the rigging and climbs the
masts, he loafs about the forecastle and dances in awkward fashion to
the playing of the accordion or the singing of the songs with which
the seamen pass their idle hours. He is the pest of the galley, the
comedian of the mess room; there have been cases known where the beasts
have been taught simple tasks, following the sailors about at their
duties and making ludicrous efforts to work also. It is a happy life
for these animals; through their imitative natures they learn tricks
and comicalities. Above all, they have health and strength, and when
full growth does come, the sea captain knows that he is going to gain
a heavy return on his investment. With the result that one day, a
ship’s mascot goes ashore, ambling past harbor officials who have seen
him take the same kind of a trip many times before. But this time he
doesn’t return and a circus begins to advertise an addition to its
menagerie.
Nor are the simians all which arrive in this fashion. The next time you
see a particularly expert boxing kangaroo, inquire into his past. In
all probability that “kang” learned his tricks while a laughing crew
lolled about the deck of a lumbering freighter for which he formed the
mascot and general humorist, while some particularly burly sailor
tried his best to outbox him, only to fail.
Outside this, the list of “regulars” which come to cagedom via
the tramp steamer, is small. There are other importations, it is
true--Little Hip, perhaps the most famous performing baby elephant
that ever came to this country, arrived via trampdom, the pet of every
sailor on the ship. Now and then members of the cat tribes are brought
in also--but this is not a good cargo. When there’s an animal aboard,
the sailor likes to be one in which he can exhibit friendliness, and
there’s little of the chummy spirit about the lion, the leopard and the
tiger. Then too, there is the matter of food; fresh meat in quantities
sufficient to feed a three or four hundred-pound cat animal, does not
abound upon the tramp steamer. But there are enough exceptions to prove
the rule; among them the case of “Nig,” a queer-shapen, mysterious
appearing black jaguar which is now a feature with the Ringling
Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, midnight hued, apparently the
most vicious beast in the whole menagerie, continually “fighting” his
trainer, Mabel Stark, yet subservient to her with a queer sort of
cat-love which amounts almost to worship. For it all there is a reason.
“Nig,” far in his past, was a ship mascot. In his cubhood days, when he
was no larger than a house cat, he appeared at a South American port in
the arms of a native who had found him in a swamp, saw in him a few
pieces of silver and hurried seaward. A tramp steamer lay in port, a
captain bargained grumpily for him and “Nig” went aboard, to play about
the decks, and to look upon this rolling, tossing ship as home.
The seamen amused themselves with him as one would fondle a housecat.
“Nig” was nothing more to them than a big black tabby, and the ship was
his to wander at will. But he grew steadily, to surprising proportions,
and there came the time when the captain, fearful that he might some
day lose his playfulness, began to look about for a purchaser.
The buyer appeared in the person of a South American circus owner
and “Nig” went forth to a cage, and to a new life which he did not
understand. All his days he had been free--why should he be caged now?
And because he was caged, he became fierce; because he was fierce, the
unknowing, unskilled menagerie men of the small circus regarded him as
a thing to be passed by or merely shunted to one side with a feeding
fork; to be cursed, and reviled as a hateful beast. Then a scout for
the big American circus saw him and purchased him. They put “Nig”
aboard a steamer, bound for America.
With that, “Nig” went wild. A ship to him meant freedom, the
association of friendly persons, playmates. He roared and bellowed and
tore at his shipping den. Night and day his heavy fore-legs lashed
and clawed, his big body pushed and bounded and leaped; gradually the
fastenings of the wooden shifting den began to weaken. The crew of the
ship became frightened. No one would go near him to feed him. And as
the days passed, “Nig” worked at his confines like a convict struggling
to escape from prison.
A wireless flashed into New York--for armed men to go to the docks
that they might be ready to kill him in case he broke loose during the
unloading process. But American circus men are different from those
of other countries. The armed men went, but with instructions to do
everything possible to save the beast’s life. His future trainer, Mabel
Stark, went also. A roomy cage was provided. Out from the hold came the
shifting den, weakened in its every fiber, while a loathsome appearing
black thing, his head already through a gaping aperture, strove at
escape. Down to the docks and a hasty transfer to the big cage. Then
the crooning voice of a woman:
“Hello Nig! There, Nig, old boy! You’re all right--you’re among
friends! Nice old Nig!”
Gradually the beast ceased to roar and bellow and leap. At last he came
to the bars, and the hand of a woman scratched at his head. The fierce
beast was dangerous no longer. All he had wanted was kindness and
companionship!
CHAPTER III
CHARACTER IN THE CAGES
Once upon a time I saw a gang fight, down in the gas-house district
of New York. The street had been quiet a moment before, save for two
men walking toward each other, and a group of be-capped, furtive-eyed
individuals lounging in front of a cigar store, intent upon nothing,
apparently, save loafing. Then the first blow was struck as the two men
met!
Immediately that crowd of loafers leaped into action; soon they were
crowded about the fighting pair; darting and leaping in their attempt
to reach the man whom they strove to overcome. At last the struggling
twain broke for a moment, giving an opportunity for the gang to reach
its victim; soon the overpowered man lay an unconscious thing of welts
and wounds upon the pavement, while the gang slunk away into places of
hiding lest they be discovered upon the arrival of the police.
Not so long ago, I saw another gang fight. This time the scene was not
a city street but the “permanent cages” of a menagerie in the winter
quarters of a big circus. The victim was a hyena; the gang composed of
striped Bengal tigers. But the tactics were just the same!
One began the fight, centering every attention of his victim upon
himself. Then while the howling, loathsome hyena strove his best to
ward off the attack of a superior foe, the three other Bengal tigers
crept upon him unaware, caught him with their heavy claws, dragged him
through an opening beneath the sliding door of the cage partition--then
ripped him to pieces! It was the gas-house district fight all over
again!
In fact, when quarrels and bickerings and temper are concerned, one
encounters some strange things in the menagerie of a big circus--and
for it all, there is only one parallel. For once a person becomes
interested enough to look behind the scenes. The menagerie ceases
to become such; it metamorphoses into a distinct community. The
investigator finds that everything with which a chief of police
is forced to cope in an ordinary town is work for the menagerie
superintendent also. The same fights, the same quarrels, the same
hatreds are there; the only difference is that the chief of police
has the advantage. He copes with human beings, to whom he can talk,
and whom he can warn against future infractions of the law. The
law-breakers under the supervision of the menagerie superintendent are
animals; one can’t punish a lion by fining him five bones. He doesn’t
know what is meant by it and simply stores up a new grudge because he’s
been deprived of his food, while the rest of the menagerie is glutting
itself with an extra portion.
With the result that there is far more lawlessness in the menagerie
than there is in the community. When Bill Jones comes home to dinner
with a headache there may be a quarrel because of his grouch, and he
may tell his wife that she’s the world’s worst cook, or make a few
other choice and personal remarks, but as a rule, he doesn’t pick up
the ax and carve his initials in her head with it. But when some one
crosses a lion that’s suffering from headache, the sky’s the limit.
Into action leap his claws and teeth, and unless there are plenty
of prod bars and feeding forks handy, the result, all too often, is
another family murder. When a jungle beast is the owner and possessor
of a side-splitting headache, he doesn’t care how soon he kills his
mate, the quicker the better. After which, perhaps, he can get a bit of
uninterrupted rest.
More, in the menagerie, a headache is a perfectly good alibi. It
wouldn’t amount to much for a man to stand in court and announce that
he killed his wife because his head or tooth ached, or because he had
an ingrowing toenail. But in the menagerie, the justifications are a
bit different. Animal men realize that the caged charges under their
care cannot know what is wrong with them, and what gives them such a
terrific grouch, and so they blame themselves when these things happen
and render a verdict:
“We, the jury, find that the Lioness Trilby came to her death because
she bothered Duke, who was suffering from indigestion.”
For, let it be known, all these things happen with animals. Headaches,
indigestion, sore feet, tuberculosis, pneumonia, rheumatism, toothache,
ingrowing toenails and even insanity are all logical excuses for
assault and battery, even murder, when the culprits are the caged
beasts of a menagerie or zoo. To say nothing of the hundred and one
other and more natural causes which bring trouble, and which, by the
way, can be found also on the police blotters of any large city.
For, just as greed, hate, avarice, theft, the desire for power, the
difference between races, viciousness and downright cantankerousness
cause trouble for the police of a community, so do these things breed
excitement in the menagerie. Behind every quarrel of the cages there is
a reason, such as one finds in the records of the emergency hospital,
or upon the complaint books of the police and justice courts.
[Illustration: INDIGESTION MAKES A LION VICIOUS IN THE ARENA.]
[Illustration: NEVER TRY TO DO THIS IF THE LION HAS A HEADACHE.]
Of all the causes, perhaps the physical ones are the occasions of the
most brawls, those brought about by indigestion, headache and the sort.
Sounds a bit unusual, doesn’t it, that animals should be subject to
the same ailments as humans? Yet, on consideration, it shouldn’t. The
mechanical construction of the body is about the same; why shouldn’t it
be subject to the same ills? Headache, for instance, or rheumatism.
However, rheumatism with animals comes most often from a certain
thing--inbreeding. When the father and the mother of the beast are too
closely related, the result is a knotty, stumbling cub, practically
saturated with rheumatism. The further result is a mean-minded animal,
built upon the same principles as the human incorrigible. More than one
“untamable” beast has been cured of rheumatism and become perfectly
tractable. No mind in the world can be peaceable with every joint of
the body aching!
The same is true of toothache, and in one instance, at least, I’ve seen
it lead to some surprising things. Whether you know it or not, the
hippopotamus, contrary to general belief, is one of the most amiable
animals of the whole menagerie. A great river hog, he has little
thought save his tank, his carrots and hay, and to be let alone. With
one of the big shows is one of these beasts that is so tractable that
he is allowed to wander at will wherever he cares to do so, and until a
few months ago, his wanderings, especially when the show was in winter
quarters, were made a thing of continual woe by two baby elephants who
persisted in tormenting the poor old hippo by every sort of trick
which came into their brains. They would slap him with their trunks,
then move swiftly away. They would butt him about the yard, steal his
food, and in general make life a burden, while the hippopotamus did
nothing save grunt in piteous fashion and strive his best to get out of
their path. Then came the change.
Bon, as the river hog was called, on a warm day this spring, waddled
as usual into the winter quarters yard. The two elephants were there
to receive him and to start their usual pranks. But the first move
brought disaster. Wide open went the long-toothed mouth of the hippo,
a bellowing grunt came from his big throat, and the elephants started
hurriedly in the other direction, while Bon, pig-eyes gleaming
viciously, short legs spraddled, strove his utmost to overtake them.
At last he cornered them behind a parade wagon under one of the sheds
and there he held them, trumpeting and squealing, until the animal
men came to their assistance. But even then Bon would not release his
victims. Instead he rushed at the caretakers, and for a time held the
whole menagerie yard at bay, until his heavy cage could be pushed into
position, other dens placed about him to form a barricade, and the
hulking beast at last forced into his prison. Even there he continued
to bellow and “open up,” until the circus men believed they had found
something new, a hippopotamus that had gone “bad.” However, the
superintendent held a different idea.
“Thought I noticed a hole in one o’ them tushes when he opened up the
last time,” he announced. “I’ll wait until he quiets down and take a
look.”
More, when the time for the investigation came, it was found that Bon
possessed a cavity in one of his big teeth almost large enough to admit
two of the superintendent’s fingers, and so deep that it was quite
evident that the nerve was exposed. A veterinary was called and given
the biggest dental job he ever had tackled, that of killing the nerve
of a hippopotamus tooth, extracting that nerve, filling the root canals
and then plugging up the hole. Nearly three weeks was required for
the task, as it was necessary to kill the nerve by degrees, with the
hippopotamus lashed by a perfect network of chains, and his big mouth
held open with blocks and tackles. But it was accomplished, and since
then, Bon has been his old, amiable self again.
As to the indigestion and the headaches, sometimes they go together,
and sometimes they don’t.
On the circus, life is a matter of constant travel. The show is here
one day, a hundred miles farther on the next, while always a day in
advance is an overworked individual called the “twenty-four man,” whose
task it is to provide the circus with everything it needs, even to
the meat which is fed the carnivorous animals. Naturally, with one
town a metropolis and the next a village, there are various grades and
conditions of meat. One day the food will be a cold-storage product,
the next perfectly fresh, and perhaps on the third slightly tainted.
The result is indigestion on the part of the cat animals, a headache,
a bad appearance, dull eyes, and a mammoth grouch. Those are the times
when the trainers look sharper than usual. A lion with indigestion
and a headache doesn’t care much for consequences. He’s looking for
trouble. As to the specific headache, have you ever noticed that a
menagerie carries a peculiar odor all its own? That’s what brings the
headache: too much “aroma.”
Every cat animal gives off this particular body-odor, which is
saturated with the fumes of ammonia. The result is that unless there is
plenty of ventilation, the ammonia so loads the air that the breathing
of it clogs the brain and brings a terrific headache. I have seen
everything, man and brute, suffering from this cause in menagerie
houses poorly equipped for ventilation, and forced to be closed tightly
because of extremely cold weather. In the summer, the beasts themselves
suffer on “long runs” where the cages are “boarded up” for an unusual
length of time; there is not sufficient air circulation to carry away
the ammonia smell and the result is an ear-splitter of a headache.
It’s often also the cause of some twenty or thirty encounters that
may run all the way from a sharp spat between two caged animals to an
actual murder! Which explains the fact that on hot days--if you’ve ever
seen a circus on the move--the side boards often are let down from the
cages, and a virtual menagerie display of cat animals is given by the
show trains as it moves through the small cities along its route to the
next show stand.
As to the other natural causes, the surest way to bring bad temper
to an elephant is to neglect his feet. The great weight of the
beast and the constant succession of pavements results in “corns”
between the big toes, or great patches of callous on the ball of the
foot, and unless these are carefully “chiropodized,” there is a bad
elephant in the herd. An elephant weighs from two to three tons. You
can imagine that weight pressing on a “corn!” He becomes fretful,
irritable and dangerous. The result is that the feet of circus
elephants are inspected regularly, and that every “bull-keeper,” as the
superintendents of the herds are called, is an expert in elephantine
chiropody!
The same, in a measure, is true of the cat animal keepers, except that
their greatest care regarding the feet of the beast must concern the
claws, lest they turn back into the flesh. A circus with which I once
was connected possessed a big leopard, and one that was considered the
most tractable of the whole group of performing “pards.” One morning
when the cage was opened, it was to reveal a hissing, red-jawed brute,
his body splotched with blood, and his mate dead in a corner of the
den. An investigation brought the reason: he had been maddened by the
pain of a claw which had turned back into his flesh, and which drove
like a knife thrust with his every step! He hadn’t really desired
to kill his mate; he merely had become so frantic with pain that
his senses for the moment left him, and he murdered while under the
influence of a thing he could not control. So the animal men chalked it
up to mental aberration, and let it go at that. For even with animals
they’ve encountered insanity in its true form, even hallucinations!
[Illustration: BABY WILD CATS, AND THEY LOOK THEIR PART.]
It came in the being of Buddha, a great, beautifully striped Bengal
tiger on one of the shows a few years ago. The beast belonged to a
performing group and was trained to refuse to enter its den at the
conclusion of the arena performance until the trainer, apparently at
the end of his resources, would bring forth his revolver and fire twice
at the recalcitrant brute. Then the tiger would turn, and with a rush
seek its cage, making a leap of some ten feet at great speed, for the
entrance. However, one afternoon, it misjudged, leaping slightly to
the right, with the result that it struck its head with crashing force
against one of the steel uprights of the arena. For a second it
scrambled wildly, then dropped to the ground. The trainer, seeing that
the beast was unconscious, hurriedly unstrapped the arena gate and
allowed the entrance of assistants, who loaded the stricken tiger into
the cage. Once out of the circus tent, the trainer worked over the
beast until consciousness returned, then boarded the cage up for the
day, believing that rest and darkness would repair the damage.
But the next morning the glare of insanity was in the great cat’s
eyes when the side boards were removed. It hissed. It roared. Then
it leaped, as the trainer sought to approach. In vain the friend of
other days tried to soothe it; all to no purpose. And the queer thing
was that the gaze of the striped brute was far above the head of the
trainer, and when it leaped, it struck at the steel bars at the very
top of the cage. A hurry call was sent for the owner-manager, and that
wise old showman stood for a long time in thought. At last:
“Bring me a piece of canvas,” he ordered, and an animal man hurried to
comply. The owner placed the fabric on the end of a stick and pushed it
to the very bars of the cage. The beast growled, hissed, then leaped
again. But the claws struck the steel of the bars and fully two feet
above the offending canvas! The owner grunted.
“Hallucinations!” he announced. “Sees everything about twice as big as
it really is. That’s why it strikes so high.”
Following which test after test was resorted to, with the same result
and the same verdict. Rest and darkness, pampering and quiet did not
aid, though the circus man strove for months to return the tiger to its
natural self. At last came the only remedy for a suffering thing,--a
shot from a high-powered rifle, and the entry of a menagerie loss in
the cause of humanity.
The same sort of action was necessary a few years ago in another
circus when one of a group of four tigers suddenly developed fits
while the show was on parade. But before Fred Alispaw, the menagerie
superintendent, could perform an act of mercy, the companion tigers
had given an example of cruelty toward one of their kind. The unusual
actions of the Bengal seemed to madden them; before the shot could be
fired, they had nearly torn their cage-mate to bits! When the hide
of the beast was examined, it did not show a space larger than a
six-inch square that had not been pierced by the claws of the other
fright-maddened occupants of the cage.
Fear--fear of man, of unusual happenings, even of a flag which drops
awry and flaps against the bars of a cage--is the biggest problem that
the animal trainer has to face. The minute an animal becomes possessed
of fear, he becomes possessed also of murder, nor is his best friend,
man or beast, exempt from the effects of the desire to kill the first
thing he sees. Mabel Stark, one of the widely known animal trainers,
bears many a tiger scar simply because a “towner” horseman insisted
on riding too close to the cage which she occupied with three tigers
during a parade. The animals became frightened; they fought first among
themselves, then turned almost simultaneously upon their trainer. When
at last she was rescued, she was a mass of claw and tooth marks--and a
hospital inmate for more than three weeks!
Greed and avarice too are always present. The exemplification of greed
is especially apparent at a time when one would think it farthest away,
at the time of mating. When the springtime comes and the birds twitter
in the trees, when the young man walks up the maple-lined street with
a box of candy under his arm, and when the unselfishness of love is
in the air, that is when the cat animal of the menagerie becomes
greedy. The lion or the tiger doesn’t woo his wife by offering her the
best of the portion of horse-meat that is shoved to him through the
bars. Instead, he eats his supply as rapidly as he can, then rushes
toward his mate, gives her a good wallop on the side of the head, and
takes her breakfast away from her. Or if the mate happens to be a bit
stronger than he, she does the robbing. It’s all a matter of strength
and determination, and the result usually is a glorious marital fight.
Incidentally greed, in one or two instances of menagerie life, has
brought strange denouements. In one case, at least, it made a hero out
of a coward, and reversed the regular rules of menagerie supremacy.
Although the lion may be the king of beasts in looks, actions, and
honor, he is far from it in fighting ability. The clash between the
lion and the tiger invariably ends in a victory for the striped beast,
and in several encounters between King Edward, a big black-maned
Nubian, and Dan, a Royal Bengal tiger, the “king of beasts” had moved
out second best. Evidently Dan realized the fact, for when the two were
in the arena together, it was a constant succession of bullying on the
part of the tiger, of cuffing matches in which the striped beast stood
on his haunches and slapped the lion with quick, shifting blows, for
all the world like those of a lightweight boxer, and of rumbling growls
which sent King Edward hurrying to his pedestal whenever he came in the
proximity of his enemy. But at last there came a reversal.
They were cage-mates, that is, they occupied a cage together, but not
in company, if it thus can be explained. A two-inch wooden partition
divided them, and while each had half a cage, neither ever was actually
placed with the other. For several days King Edward had been “off his
feed,” and to tempt his appetite, Lucia Zora, his trainer, conceived
the idea of feeding him a live chicken. The fowl was thrust between the
bars to squawk and flutter wildly, and at last to be captured in the
big claws of the excited lion, which, like some overgrown house cat,
began to toy with the tid-bit for a moment before devouring it. But
just then, a new element entered, Dan the Bengal.
The tiger had scented the fowl and noticed the commotion on the other
side of the cage. Frantically he had begun to work at the partition
which divided him from the lion; finally in some fashion, he loosened
the clamp, and then raised the dividing board, even as a person would
raise a window, and rushed through toward the tormented King Edward.
But this time the lion did not skulk away. Instead, the beast turned,
a raging engine of destruction, and the fight that followed was the
fiercest thing that the menagerie had seen in years. The animal men
sought to separate them. It was useless. King Edward had reached the
end of his submission, and Dan, through his greed, the end of his life.
For the lion, disregarding all the usual leonine methods of fighting,
suddenly adopted the tiger’s tactics, attacking from a position
straight on his haunches, and with both forepaws working, instead of
the usual one. The result was that soon the tiger’s claws were tangled
in the greasy, heavy, armor-like mane of the lion--and useless. While
those of King Edward ripped at the foe until Dan sank to the cage
floor, a stricken, gasping, disembowelled thing. Then--and not until
then--King Edward ceased his attack, disengaged his mane from the now
useless claws of the Bengal, and went back to his feast!
In fact, the usual end of a quarrel which has its inception in greed
or avarice is death. And those elements can be typified in queer
incidents. An ostrich possesses three things, the smallest brain of any
bird or animal of its size, the most powerful kick of anything except a
mule, and a positive obsession for anything that glitters. A few years
ago, a circus made a feature of two ostriches trained to draw a small
cart in parade and in the entrees, keeping the big birds in a net-wire
enclosure in the menagerie tent as an exhibition. The owner of the
show possessed a large diamond ring, and it was one of his amusements
to raise his hand over the enclosure and watch the antics of the
weak-billed birds as they strove vainly to pull the glittering stone
from its setting. Then one day a loose prong allowed the gem to drop
within the enclosure!
A wide-eyed and somewhat excited owner gulped as he saw two thousand
dollars worth of diamond fall into the straw and the two ostriches
rush wildly for it. Then his eyes grew even wider as one of the birds
raised a heavy foot, and with a straight, outward kick, sent his
be-plumed companion reeling half across the enclosure. However, before
the kicker could reach the diamond, the kickee was back on the job
again, to release a series of blows, and the fight was on.
It continued for a half an hour, and ended only when one of the birds,
by a swift and well-aimed blow, caught his adversary just at the
junction of the neck and head, decapitating him. By that time, all idea
of what the fight was about had left the tiny brain of the victor, and
gasping, his wings raised, he wobbled to a far end of the enclosure and
settled there, while the owner thrust a hand hurriedly into the straw,
rescued his diamond and rushed for a jeweler.
“Lucky at that,” he mused, as he went out of the menagerie entrance,
“you can buy ostriches for a hundred dollars apiece!”
So the list runs, even through to that of racial hatreds. The
oft-repeated chase of the dog and cat, and the enmity which seemingly
is never overcome between them, is repeated in the menagerie, with the
exception of the fact that here it is the cat which chases the dog. It
is almost impossible to work a leopard group in the same arena or ring
in which a dog act has been worked; the canine scent arouses them to
such an extent that they can think of nothing else than hunting their
hereditary enemy. The same is true in a measure with tigers, and in
a lesser degree with lions. In a few instances, cases have been known
where lions and dogs actually have become friends, but with a tiger or
leopard, never. The sole result of their meeting is a swift lunge, a
crackling impact, a setting of the feline jaws at the base of the dog’s
skull, and the breaking of its neck, all happening in an instant. Then
the dog is devoured, nor can all the efforts of animal men or trainers
drag the enraged beast from its prey.
In fact, the only thing that can arouse greater excitement among
felines than a dog is that outcast of the animal world, the hyena. Here
the racial lines are drawn sharply and distinctly; it is an enmity
which is at high pitch always; the very proximity of a hyena cage
will drive a tiger or leopard to madness, and if a feline is placed
in the compartment opposite to a hyena, it seldom ceases its efforts
until the day when some careless animal attendant leaves the partition
door unclamped, when the feline can claw and tear until it raises the
barrier and rushes through to annihilate its foe.
In lesser degree is shown the hatred of a tiger for a horse, the hatred
of a puma for a bear, the hatred of a chimpanzee for an elephant.
[Illustration: REPRESENTATIVE CIRCUS DOGS.]
Just as a warning, if you are a father or mother, and you decide some
time to take your baby to the circus, never allow it to get within
“reaching distance” of a leopard’s cage. Why, no animal man can
explain, but the hatred of a leopard for a baby amounts almost to a
mania, and the beast will fret itself into a frenzy in its attempts to
reach through the bars, and catch its victim in its poisonous claws,
pull it into the cage, there to kill and devour it!
So the list of emotional causes for menagerie quarrels is nearly run.
But there remain two things in which the line is rather closely drawn
between the beast and the human. One of them is the irritation of
annoying things and the other is just general cussedness.
Have you ever been in a crowd--a tremendous, jostling, packed
crowd--where every one is talking at once, where somebody steps on
your toes, where the air is stifling, and there doesn’t seem room
to breathe? And have you ever been able to come out of one of those
crowds with your temper actually whole? The same is true of animals;
it is a rule with the circus that when the crowd reaches unbearable
proportions, the side boards of the animal cages must be put in place
and the brutes allowed to rest in darkness and quiet. The irritation of
constant, thick-packed throngs before their cages gets on their nerves
to such an extent that there is danger of a general fight throughout
the whole menagerie! More, in several cases the beasts have been known
to vent their rage upon the crowd itself, and there is the constant
danger that some one will be pushed too close to the cages. This would
mean the instant extension of a poisonous set of claws, a roar and a
slashing blow which might mean death. So, while the crowd may protest,
the circus knows best, and closes the cages.
Cussedness? There are just two things to remember. Never try to make
friends with a rhinoceros or a camel. They are the two crabs of the
animal universe; evil-tempered, selfish, mean and vengeful. Not even
the animal attendant ever knows when a rhinoceros is going to turn upon
him; there does not seem to be a single element of the big, armored
beast’s nature that admits of friendliness.
And the camel! He is the supreme grouch of the menagerie. He’s never in
good temper. He’s the bestial dyspeptic of the universe, and he carries
a weapon in his mouth that is worse than the far-heralded perfume of
the polecat. When a camel decides that he doesn’t like you, he gives
you his cud, with an aim that would cause the crack-hitting tobacco
chewers of the country store to curl up in envy. And once you’ve become
the owner and possessor of that cud, splattered over your person, the
best thing to do is to hurry to the nearest store and buy yourself a
new suit of clothing!
But the cud isn’t the only weapon of the camel. His temper is such that
he uses everything available,--teeth, head and hoofs! He can kick like
a bay steer, butt like a goat, and bite like a steel vise. More, once
he decides upon a dislike, he doesn’t stop until he has made use of his
every item of armament. But there’s at least one redeeming feature;
once it’s all out of his system, it’s out!
In the circus, when an animal man discovers that he is the recipient
of dislike on the part of the camel, he doesn’t attempt to cajole or
threaten. He merely plants a bale of hay upon his back, covers this
with a piece of canvas, then, walking close to the camel, does or says
something to irritate the beast. The result is a quick thrust of teeth
or hoofs, whereupon the animal man dumps the “dummy” on the ground
and quickly moves to the nearest hiding place. The camel doesn’t even
notice him; its every vengeful thought is bent upon that thing on the
ground. For fifteen minutes the “slaughter” continues, in which the
beast kicks the canvas-covered hay, bites it, spits upon it, butts it
and tramples it. After which the animal man can approach with impunity.
To the camel, the old animal man is dead, killed during a personally
conducted slaughter. This new person he treats as some one he never had
seen before, and all malice is gone.
In which, perhaps, was the beginning of that old circus axiom:
“If you can’t beat ’em--jine ’em!”
CHAPTER IV
KIDS OF THE CAGES
The circus was in the “cracker neck” district; out at the front gates,
there was quarreling and bickering, as time after time the inner ticket
takers stretched a hand toward some scrawny woman with a gangly boy in
her arms and exclaimed:
“Hey, Leddy! Two bits fer thet kid. An’ Leddy--’tain’t polite no more
for gents to let women carry ’em aroun’.”
This was the district of “stair-steps,” of thin, narrow-shouldered
women, trailed by processions of children, five and six in a line,
thin-cheeked, narrow-necked, ill nurtured, and ill prepared, through
too fast progeneration, for a chance in life. More than once the
manager personally ushered some gaunt family through the gates when the
frightened glance of the mother told all too plainly that there were no
funds to take care of the progeny which she had hoped to slip past the
ticket takers. For us of the circus, there was something pitiable about
it all; the big show likes to take misery only for itself. With the
result that the owner lost more than one quarter that day, because of
persons admitted without a charge.
“Don’t need many ladders aroun’ this country,” said a facetious animal
man. “All they have t’ do is line up the kids and walk on their heads.
Ever see so many stair-steppers?”
“Shorty” Alispaw, menagerie superintendent, nodded.
“Reminds me,” he said, “I’ve got to be getting rid of a few of my own.
Better be advertising ’em pretty quick; some carnival outfit may want
’em.”
He jerked a thumb toward a gilded cage in which romped what appeared
to be three rather thin, but otherwise healthy leonine youngsters. I
stepped closer.
“They look all right. What’s wrong with ’em?”
Shorty glanced again toward the cage, then looked out toward the
crowded menagerie, where mothers still were herding their numerous
broods along the sawdust pathways.
“Same as them,” came his announcement. “Stair-steppers. Second litter
in a year. Not much difference between them and the humans. Bring ’em
into the world too fast, and they’ll be on the bum somehow. Something
always showing up after they get grown. Now you’d say those were
perfectly healthy cubs, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes--maybe a little thin.”
“And weak in the hind quarters, and with poor hearts, excitable
natures; all wrong on the digestion and a half a dozen other things.
Same way as with human kids that’ve piled into the world too fast.
Always yelping for the doctor.”
Which brought up the subject of menagerie kids in general, and a good
many comparisons. For, after all, the child of the gilded cage isn’t so
much different from the human baby.
There are the same trials and tribulations, the same squawks resultant
from a bumped head, the same curiosity and mischievousness, and the
same troublous times in becoming acquainted with the world and its
manners, even to the extent of kindergarten. More than that, there are
the personalities, the family traits; the children who are bright, the
ones who are dullards; there is family pride, the don’t-care attitude;
the mother who neglects her children and the father----
But fathers seem to run a bit short on family affairs in the animal
kingdom, with the exception of one beast, the lion. The King of Beasts
is the original home-lover, believes, according to his nature, that
he has the finest little girl in the world for a wife, and stays with
the children when their mother has other things to think about. What’s
more, he is willing to protect them. In fact, he often is too good a
protector; sometimes he actually kills them with kindness.
It is a menagerie rule that all animal mothers and their children shall
be granted seclusion until the baby is accustomed to the circus world
with its attendant bawling of ticket sellers, surging of the crowds,
and the general excitement of circus day. Hence, ten days before the
advent of children, the boards are placed about the cage and the mother
is left in solitude. In this seclusion the babies arrive, to crawl and
whine in darkness until their eyes open, then to live in the quiet and
peace for a week more, until the nervous fears of the mother are over
and the babies themselves are stronger and not so easily frightened by
the throngs of onlookers about the cages. But sometimes the menagerie
attendants make mistakes or are ignorant; the superintendent himself is
a busy man. He cannot look after everything.
Thus it was that on a show with which I once traveled, Queen brought
into the world three fuzzy little cubs. The menagerie superintendent
had fastened the door tight and given his instructions that the
side boards were not to be removed until he had given the command.
In one half of the cage was the mother and her babies, while in the
other compartment was Prince, the proud father, growling gruffly
through the bars at his offspring. Parade time came and the menagerie
superintendent went forth with the elephant herd, always a source of
worry to a circus because of their temperamental natures and the
danger of a stampede. Only a new man, hired that morning and not
conversant with the details of the care of the cage inmates, was left
in the big tent, and in his work he decided, like many another new man,
and some new brooms, to be thorough.
Evidently, to his mind, some careless attendant had forgotten to
take the side boards from the cage which housed Queen, Prince and
their babies. The new man took them down; then, in his efforts to be
thorough, decided to sweep out the cage. Queen was docile and made no
objections to his interference, although nervous regarding her cubs.
But Prince was plainly hostile; the lion father is ever ready to
battle for his young. The result was that the new attendant raised the
partition separating Prince from his family, and once the male had gone
through the opening, the man sprang within to sweep out the cage. This
done, he again raised the partition, and by the use of a feeding fork,
sought to make Prince return to his own home. The efforts were useless.
The great lion became enraged to a point of fury. He fought the fork,
clawing at it and seeking to bite the steel. He lunged against the
bars, the great tent echoing with his roars--then suddenly appeared to
consider that the attack was not against him, but against his offspring.
Queen, in the meanwhile, had picked up two of the cubs, carried them
to a corner and was returning for the third when Prince saw it. A lunge
and he had grasped the little ball of fur by the scruff of the neck,
and with quick, pacing steps, had begun to carry it, seeking in his
ignorant way for some place to hide it and keep it safe from harm.
Into his side of the den he went at last and the attendant dropped the
partition. But the great Nubian still paced; still the cub dangled
from his tremendous jaws. The attendant strove to make him free the
cub by harassing him; it only made matters worse. Prince offered no
resistance; he only quickened his frightened, maddened pacing, and
still carried the cub. When the parade returned and the menagerie
superintendent entered the tent, he found the new man facing him with
the announcement that Prince had taken one of his cubs and would not
release it.
There was little time for reprimands. The superintendent affixed the
side boards to the den as quickly as possible, hoping against hope. It
was in vain. Prince, faithful, protective old Prince, had killed when
he had sought to aid. The baby was dead, choked through the tightening
of the throat skin as old Prince had carried it aimlessly to and fro,
seeking a spot where it might be safe! That night, when the circus
left town, it left also a somewhat bewildered man, still hazy from
the volleys of epithets which had flown in his direction from the
menagerie superintendent, and a little mound of earth out behind the
big top, where slept a lion cub, dead because of a father’s instinctive
desire for its protection.
[Illustration: BABY LIONS ARE ALWAYS SOUGHT AFTER AS PETS.]
[Illustration: A PAIR OF REAL “TEDDY BEARS”.]
In fact, in the animal kingdom, the lion is the model husband and
father. It even happens that the lion father will watch his offspring
with more care and concern than the mother. More than one menagerie
feature has been provided through this air of proprietorship and pride
which the lion shows in his young. Circus men neglect no opportunities
to provide the unusual, with the result that at the advent of a litter
of cubs, the male sometimes is allowed to enter the cage where, while
the crowd looks on, he good-naturedly crouches, allows the cubs to
climb on his back, then, growling in good humor, walks slowly about the
cage, the mother looking on from her corner, for all the world like a
happily wedded pair; sometimes the proud papa lies down on the floor,
letting the kids rest on his back. In fact, the lion father thinks a
great deal of his children. If any one should happen to doubt it, just
try to take a litter of lion cubs out of a cage while the father is
there. The mother may seek her corner in fright, but not the father.
He becomes a vengeful demon, ready to fight feeding forks, revolver
fire, anything; even willing to give his life that his cubs may be
protected. There is only one serious drawback in the happiness of
lion families. They have too many children--six a year in groups
of three--with the result that all too often the offspring is weak,
prone to every disease, sometimes dulled in mentality and subject
to sunstrokes. When the circus starts into hot territory the wise
menagerie superintendent begins looking about for zoos in cool climates
that desire cat animals, especially lions. Otherwise the penalties
of birth may cause a few losses to be entered in the ledgers of the
treasury wagon.
Quite the opposite in family bliss is the estate of the tiger. With
Mr. and Mrs. Bengal there isn’t any such thing. The female tiger
hates her mate and he dislikes her as cordially. Not only that, but
he doesn’t seem to understand why there should be children in any
family. To a gentleman tiger, there is no greater indoor sport than
that of murdering his offspring, while to the mother there is nothing
that merits greater love and protection than the one or two cubs
which arrive every few years, for the tiger has children but seldom
in captivity. Never is there offspring more than once a year, and
sometimes the space lengthens to only once in three years; and usually
there is but one cub.
Incidentally, there’s a sex problem in tigerdom; many a tigress goes
through life an old maid, simply because there are not enough gentlemen
tigers to go round. An invariable rule seems to hold sway with the
striped beasts; if only one cub is born, the menagerie superintendent
may announce a boy or a girl, for with the single child the matter of
sex seems to be a haphazard affair. But let two cubs come into the
world and one of them will be a male while the other invariably will be
a female; while with the advent of a litter of three, there is usually
a ratio of two females to one male, with the result that there is
always a preponderance of female tigers. Perhaps that’s what makes the
males so grouchy.
For grouchy they are, especially toward their children. If the father
enters, through some accident, the mother’s side of the cage, it always
means a skirmish, and a wild effort on the part of the female to
protect her young, usually resulting in failure. The male tiger is much
larger and stronger, with the result that a brief battle leaves her
gasping and terrified, while with quick pounces and snarls of seeming
delight, the father murders his children, one by one, and then devours
them! But once, at least, in the circus world, there was reversal of
the usual happening.
Grace and Calcutta were the parents of three children, and loved each
other as soap loves a buzz saw. Partitioned from each other in the same
cage, they spent most of their time in snarling and hissing at each
other, the big male bounding and leaping at the bars, striving in his
utmost to break through. Then, one day, a careless attendant left the
partition open, and Calcutta gained his object.
But his rush did not seem to frighten Grace. Her cubs behind her, she
swayed uncertainly for a moment, as if summoning every atom of her
strength. Then, before attendants could separate them, they had met!
The fight which followed is history in the circus, passed along from
one menagerie superintendent to another as an example of mother love
and desperation. Grace was fully fifty pounds lighter than her vengeful
mate, but the thought of weight, or power or strength did not seem to
enter her mind. She only knew that if once the great, striped thing
passed her, three cubs would die, and she fought for them with every
vestige of her strength. In vain the menagerie men strove to separate
the struggling pair. The hose cart was hurried within the tent, and,
the pump working to its utmost, the full force of water was turned
upon them, the one thing which can be counted upon to cause a caged
animal to desist from an attack. Neither Grace nor Calcutta seemed even
to notice it. At last, the side boards were raised, in the hope that
darkness might end the battle. It only increased the turmoil within,
the noise of which rose higher and higher, at last to cease. The battle
was over.
Hurriedly the men dropped the side boards--in a futile hope. Calcutta
was dead, stretched almost the length of the compartment, while huddled
in a corner lay Grace, bleeding from a hundred tooth and claw marks,
but apparently content to lick and growl at the three frightened cubs
which tumbled about her!
Nor is it the father which is always the murderer in the tiger family.
Sometimes it is the mother herself, following in beast life the theory
of Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol” by killing the thing which she
loves best!
Of all the caged beasts of the circus, the tiger is the most nervous
and high-strung. Permanent insanity among tigers is not at all unusual,
while insanity for the mother at the time of the birth of her young
is a thing which every menagerie man fears. During this insanity, the
tiger is the enemy of everything, including herself. She kills her
cubs, she tears at her own flesh, she howls and roars and thunders
until the menagerie is a pandemonium. And the next day, once more
possessed of her mental balance, she wanders about her cage, whining
pitifully, searching, searching for the thing that is gone, her baby,
murdered while she had no knowledge of her actions. Nor can anything
appease her--month after month she will search, until at last, like a
human mother, her grief assuages itself in the expectation of a new
brood.
From all of which may be gained the idea that a tiger baby hasn’t an
easy time in life. To tell the truth, next to the leopard, its lot
is about the hardest in the menagerie. Threatened by both father and
mother at birth, with nervous stomachs and belligerent dispositions,
the tiger cub fights almost a constant battle for life. Of all the cat
animals, a tiger that has passed the danger mark, when it can shift for
itself, is the most celebrated thing in the show. And again it is the
female which usually wins the tussle. The male tiger is born with blood
in his eye. He is not allowed to play about the circus, the pet of
every canvasman and roughneck and animal man and performer, as is the
lion cub, which in its childhood is little different from a house cat.
Instead, the tiger baby must be kept caged. Otherwise it will tackle
the first dog that comes along, regardless of the disadvantage in size,
and there will be another feline catastrophe to mourn.
As for the leopard, it is the slum child of the animal kingdom. Its
mother cares nothing about it, the father is a brute, and almost from
the moment that the baby’s eyes are open, it shifts for itself. But
what it loses in parental affection, it makes up in play; there is
nothing in the whole menagerie which plays harder, not even the monkey.
The bars of the cage were made for climbing, and up the leopard kittens
go, nor seem to care when they fall from the top of the den, landing
on their heads with enough force almost to knock them unconscious. To
which the female pays little or no attention.
The result is that the leopard kitten, like the human street urchin,
develops an amazing courage and cunning; it is afraid of nothing,
brooks no obstacle in its play and, through the bars, will even hiss
and snarl at a full-grown lion and give every evidence of a desire to
break through and attack it! Meanwhile the mother snores on in her
corner, or merely looks up for a moment in half-curious fashion, then
goes ahead with her sleep. Babies don’t bother her!
In fact, a great deal of interference on the part of animal attendants
enters into the rearings of a healthy baby, especially in the cat
tribe. Especially is this true in the matter of diseases, for the life
of about one out of every four children that come to healthy maturity
is due, not to the mothers, but to the menagerie superintendent and
his assistants. Around a circus it is nothing to see a lion cub being
rubbed with warm oil, or squawking his displeasure at a mustard
draught, or even swaddled in flannel bandages to combat a “cold” which,
if allowed to progress, may become pneumonia overnight and result
in death. During the epidemics of influenza, those persons with the
strongest lungs often were the surest victims, once the disease became
seated. So it is with the lion. That beast has the strongest lungs of
any animal, and it is the most prone to death, once pneumonia strikes
it.
You’ve seen the constant human “sniffler”, always possessing a cold
yet never even bothered about it. The baby tiger is its counterpart.
More delicate generally, with lungs much weaker, constitutions built
upon a less stockier plan, yet pneumonia is rare. Instead, the tiger
child prefers to have chills and fever, corresponding to the ague in
the human, and shaking through the hours of even a hot afternoon.
Incidentally it becomes the recipient of a hated remedy, equally
disgusting to the lion, the tiger, the llama, the leopard or the
elephant--for they all are dosed with it, as to the human child. Its
name is castor oil!
Reverting, however, to leopard babies, theirs is the hardest lot of any
in the menagerie. There is no cure for their ailment, which begins to
come upon them about the time they are half-grown; every one, it seems,
is destined to become a victim; sooner or later a menagerie attendant
will motion with his head and announce:
“Sure had a tough time with that Lucy leopard. Begun throwin’ ’em this
mornin’. Thought she was gone for a half-hour or so.”
The disease is epilepsy and few indeed are the leopards which go
through life without it. In the midst of play, or in the middle of an
act--it chooses no time--there come frightened clawings, terrific
convulsions and stiffenings which seem to threaten the breaking of the
spine, and the torture is on. Nor have all the efforts of veterinaries
or doctors or highly schooled menagerie men been able to combat it.
That epilepsy, by the way, has led to some strange results in the
circus, and some exciting moments. A few years ago, on a show with
which I was connected, we very proudly announced a performing father
and son, Old Man and his youngster, just maturing, Dick. They worked
well together, looked a great deal alike, and obeyed every command
implicitly. Neither of them had ever shown any evidences of epilepsy,
and around the circus we hoped that here would be one case where it did
not occur.
But it wasn’t. The afternoon was hot, the big top crowded. Out came Old
Man and Dick into the steel arena to go through their stunts. But as
the trainer gave the command to Old Man, there arrived the first hint
of trouble. The big leopard merely remained on his pedestal, staring
and “wall-eyed.” The next moment, while the great audience stiffened
with fright, there came a screeching yowl, and Old Man went about eight
feet in the air with the beginning of an epileptic fit. From every
corner of the tent came the announcers, to bawl the news that the beast
was only having a fit and that there was no danger. In the meantime,
Dick, the son, looked on with excited interest, at last to hop from
his pedestal, trot over to his father, look at him, cock his head--and
throw a fit himself!
There they were, a trainer and two leopards, the beasts doing
everything from turning airsets to back-bends, contortionist poses and
flip-flops, the audience yelling for something to be done, and nothing
of the kind possible. It was one of those moments when circus men
wished they’d never gone into the business; but they could do nothing.
The beasts could not be approached; the only thing possible was to wait
for them to “come out of it.” This Dick did in a few moments, looked
around him with a startled meow, then wabbled weakly toward the open
door of the shifting den. But Old Man remained stretched out, his heart
apparently stopped, his appearance giving every evidence of death.
Hurriedly two roughnecks came forward and bundled him into a piece
of canvas, carried him outside the big top, and covered him there,
while within was fevered activity that the big arena might be pulled
down, and acts hurried into the rings and hippodrome track to cause as
much forgetfulness as possible of the unpleasant occurrences. But the
excitement had just begun!
The band was playing, the clowns cavorting, and everything moving
swiftly and pleasantly once more, only to be interrupted, by a
goggle-eyed townsman, who burst under the side wall, leaped across the
hippodrome track and tried his best to climb a center-pole as he yelped
the announcement:
“Gosh! There’s a leopard loose out there!”
Old Man wasn’t dead at all. Instead, he had regained consciousness,
rolled out of his canvas shroud and now was busily trying to kill a
dog. Once more the announcers, ushers and every possible recruit from
the dressing tent were called to assure the audience that there was no
danger while outside the hose cart was brought forward and the stream
turned on the combatants to separate them. Finally they succeeded,
while Old Man was entangled in a tarpaulin, rolled up in its heavy
folds and returned to his cage. He never worked again.
Nor did Dick, his son. The next day both were the victims of another
fit, and at intervals of once or twice a week following. At last Old
Man lay still again, and this time death had come in earnest. Dick
followed him three days later, in spite of everything that menagerie
men and hastily summoned veterinaries could do. Epilepsy among leopards
brooks no obstacle. Its object is death, and it attains always that
which it seeks.
Nor is epilepsy the only thing against which animal men have to
contend. There’s colic, for instance, stomach troubles, “bone-head”
animals which simply can’t seem to grasp the scheme of things, “star
gazers,” or inbred lions afflicted with a curvature of the spine which
makes them stare constantly upward, tigers which eat and eat and
eat, the only result being that all the nourishment seems to go to
their tails, actually weighing them down and sapping their strength
until at last an operation is necessary. There have been instances in
circusdom where a full eight inches of tail has been amputated before
a beast could get any bodily results from his feeding. All in all, the
menagerie man has just about as much to contend with in his charges as
the head nurse of any big children’s institution. Perhaps more. For
in addition to his regular clinic of babies which show up with this,
that or the other detriment, he usually is the “mother” of a varied
assortment of orphans.
Like many a human orphan, the adult result has become extremely
valuable in its little world. One, for instance, was Sultan, now a
prized performer which, through the illness of its mother at the
time of its birth, was neglected by her until human interference was
necessary. The person who interfered was Lucia Zora, famous elephant
and animal trainer, and wife of the menagerie superintendent. For three
months Zora carried her adopted “child” to and from the circus lot
in a covered lunch basket, while the yowling youngster demanded his
bottle--a regulation baby’s nursing bottle--every two hours, the milk
being prepared in the same manner as for a real child.
Nor did night bring any surcease from the care of the infant lion.
Midnight always brought hunger and squalling which awakened the whole
Pull-man where Sultan was supposed to sleep under Zora’s berth, but
where it did everything from chewing up curtains to running off with
the shoes of the actors. At five o’clock in the morning came the same
performance, with the result that Zora spent a good part of the time
when she should have been resting in hauling forth dishes, an alcohol
stove and the inevitable bottle for the feeding of the orphan. For four
months the baby clung to the bottle before he would lap milk. Following
which the lion proved to be a little experiment in environment. Also
an evidence that jungle animals are no different from the human race.
The cave man ate only meat; he knew nothing else. The same with jungle
beasts. During the struggle of the Ringling-Barnum Circus to save the
life of John Daniel, a few years ago, the only thing which sustained
the big ape was beef broth. Yet gorillas are vegetarians. With Sultan,
scion of meat-eating family, there came the time during his two years
of petting when he relished asparagus, bread and butter, buttered
beets, and had a particular liking for strawberries and cream.
During the winter months of those two years he lived in Zora’s
home--or rather, did his best to wreck it, madly swinging on the bottom
of the lace curtains, and once climbing the table cloth and pulling
it to the floor, just at the moment when it was covered with food for
four guests. All of which Zora forgave. But when Sultan sallied forth
one day, killed three pet Belgian hares, two prized White Orpingtons,
and chased a neighbor’s cat through that neighbor’s house, knocking
over chairs, pulling down curtains, sweeping clean the shelves of a
pantry and causing a riot call to police headquarters, Zora decided
that perhaps the best place for a lusty young lion was in a cage in the
menagerie house.
Another famous lion, said by a great many to be the greatest performing
lion in the world, was also a bottle baby, raised by about the same
methods by Mrs. Walter Beckwith, and a member of the Beckwith troupe
of lions which do a great deal of work in the motion-picture studios.
There is one difference, however, and that was the fact that he never
was allowed to grow hungry, nor was any one ever allowed to go near
him at feeding time, which invariably took place within his cage. The
result was that food came to represent to him something which need
not be sought, and which could be found only within a cage; hence the
animal has no thought of it when he is working outside his den and can
be trusted implicitly.
However, for two animals, there is no such thing as surcease from
orphanage, the tiger and the leopard. Both are too frail, too prone to
inherited weaknesses, to survive on artificial feeding. But all this
is overcome by the child hippopotamus, who, once taken from the side
of his hefty mother, demands a nurse, and in no uncertain terms. The
baby hippo, the whole half-ton of him, wants a human companion, and
if he doesn’t get one, right then he lays himself down and literally
bawls himself to death. He won’t eat, he won’t sleep, he won’t play in
the waters of his tank; he just wants a playmate. Incidentally, this
yearning for companionship once caused one of the strangest sights in
the circus world.
Bon was the baby, a bulbous thing of some five hundred pounds when
he arrived from the old home place on the River Nile. The result was
that Bon began to grieve to such an extent that he worked himself into
a state of hysteria, if such a thing can be imagined in a member of
the hog family, to which the hippo belongs. Then one day the crisis
arrived; Bon began to beat his head against the bars, a favorite method
which grieving hippopotami seem to have for committing suicide. That
night Bon was happy. He had a human companion, known by no other name
than Mike--and the world was good again.
The story of Mike and Bon has been told in a previous chapter, for it
is a little instance of the love of a man for a fool beast, and a love
that was returned. Enough that Mike gave his life to save that of the
hippopotamus. But there is one incident that has not been told, the
story of his burial.
The circus bought a lot for Mike in one of the best cemeteries of the
Western town near which his death occurred. The usual “round robin”
went about the circus lot for flowers. There was only one time in which
the show people could pay their last respects to the faithful Mike, and
that came between parade and show time. That morning, the few people in
the big cemetery saw a strange cavalcade turn through the gates of the
burial place, winding among the silent tombstones and mausoleums. The
band men atop the carved wagons playing music strange to the circus;
the lions shifting in their cages; the equestriennes, with their
white, be-ribboned horses, riding beside the hearse; the snares and
bases of the Zouave drum corps muffled and beating in slow time to the
funeral music from the big-top and kid-show bands; the clowns slumped
on the big tableaux--the whole circus, Mike’s beloved circus, with its
colors, its beautiful, mottled parade horses, its cages, its clowns
and couriers and Wild West riders, with Bon whining in his big tank in
dumb wonderment as to what had become of his companion--Mike’s circus
had come to say good-by. And some way, to those who watched, there
was nothing strange about it, nothing incongruous. They were of his
life--a grim, rushing, tumultuous life behind its covering gaudiness,
and neither the paint, nor the spangles, nor glittering colors seemed
to matter.
I’ve often wondered what the conversation would be if a bunch of
menagerie mothers could get together and talk over the various
traits of their children, as humans do. There should be some very
good conversation, for each baby, it seems, has his own particular
temperament and characteristics.
For instance, the matter of play. Even a baby hippopotamus will play,
somewhat after the fashion of a lopsided barrel. An elephant baby is
as mischievous as a young puppy. The only way to keep a monkey baby
from playing is to hogtie him, and tigers, lions, leopards, cheetahs,
jaguars and all the rest of the cat tribe play themselves into
exhaustion. Especially if some kind-hearted keeper has tossed them a
ball of catnip. But for the llama and camel youngsters, there is no
such thing in existence. They know absolutely nothing about play! A
gamboling camel or a frolicking llama would send a menagerie man to the
doctor immediately to ask if he’d been drinking too much.
[Illustration: A SICK BABY ORANG-OUTANG.]
[Illustration: A BABY CAMEL WITH ITS MOTHER, THE “DUMBBELL BABY” OF THE
MENAGERIE.]
Instead, their sole amusement seems to be the gratifying of curiosity:
a trait overdeveloped in childhood which departs entirely when they
are grown. This, coupled with a desire to see how much rubbish, paper,
trash, blankets and old bones their stomachs can stand, appears to
be the only interesting part of childhood. Between the two, the circus
man prefers the llama, for it at least is a gentle, pretty thing with
some intelligence.
As for the baby camel--Here, ladies-s-s-s an’ gents, is the prize fool
of the whole animal kingdom. When Nature devised the camel, somebody
carried away the brains, leaving the finished article, especially in
babyhood, the most idiotic, dunce-like goof that ever struggled about
on four legs. For instance, in the cravings of its curiosity, the baby
camel may walk to a brick wall. It doesn’t go round; it merely stands
there, butting its head against the obstacle, or standing in amazement,
waiting for the wall to move! When it isn’t doing something like that,
it is getting in the way of the horses, the men, the elephants or
anything else that happens to come along, not because it is obstinate,
but simply because it doesn’t know enough to get out of the way. When
that diversion fails to interest, it stands and bawls. Bawls for hours
at a time, apparently taking a wonderful delight in the unmusical
flatness of its voice.
While this is going on, the mother is bawling also for her prize
numskull to come again to her side, a concert which continues for an
hour or so before the child finally understands that somebody who
feeds it desires its company at home. But does the poor idiot obey the
command? It does not. Frantically, and with an added bawling, it goes
to every other member of the camel herd before it finds its own mother!
As a reward for which, the camel mother promptly knocks down her
senseless offspring, spits at it and then bites it on the head,
probably knowing, in her motherly way, that there is less sensitiveness
there than anywhere else!
Another dumb one of the menagerie, although in a different way, is the
baby giraffe. There the dumbness is actual. From the time of birth
until the time of death, not a sound ever comes from the throat of
a giraffe, with the result that the beasts communicate evidently by
some sign language, or by an undiscovered sense of smell, for in some
strange way, the mother warns her baby of danger, and that baby comes
hurrying to her side!
Taken all in all, the giraffe is a peculiar beast anyway. The cages in
which those prized animals of the Ringling-Barnum show are transported
are padded, top, side and bottom, and low enough to almost touch the
ground. All because there’s danger at both ends. The giraffe’s legs are
so long that a troublesome step may break one of them and cause the
beast’s death. The useless horns, with which the giraffe is born, are
united to the skull and so sensitive that a serious injury to one may
mean death also. On top of this, the things are so awkward that they
can stumble and fall while walking on smooth ground! Besides that,
they are so rare and costly to catch and transport that the loss of one
means the dissipation of a young fortune. But there’s one consoling
thought, to the small boy, at least. Giraffes love slippery elm bark.
As for other “freaks,” there are many of them: the zebra, for instance,
which seems to have been born only for lion meat, and which, when a
baby, is abnormally strong, only to weaken as it grows older; the
kangaroo, which isn’t born at all, as a real living thing, but which
comes into the world a mere lump of inanimate flesh, to be lifted by
the mother to the sac of her stomach, and to develop there, until
such time as it is able to shift for itself and to feel the effects
of vanity. For there is no vainer animal living, not even the monkey.
A kangaroo or “wallaby” will remain quiescent all day, until a crowd
gets around its cage. Then like any youngster, it will “show off” until
absolutely worn out.
But to get back to the subject of orphans, there are such things
even in the realm of elephantdom. The prize one was Baby Miracle,
the daughter of Mr. Snyder and Mrs. Mamma Mary. But there seemed
to be something wrong about it all. Because when Baby Miracle, all
two hundred pounds of her, came into being one spring day in winter
quarters at Denver, Colorado, Mamma Mary took one look at what she had
brought into the world, and promptly kicked it across the menagerie
house.
Which was hardly the way to treat a newcomer. The animal men talked it
over, chained the peevish mother fore and aft, and sought a compromise.
They brought Baby Miracle forward to where the mother could get a good
look at her offspring, and by gentle words tried to assure her that
this was her baby and should be treated as such. Mamma Mary took a good
survey this time, then broke her chains and smashed a hole in the side
of the brick building as she made her get-away. By now it was more than
evident that Mamma Mary wasn’t pleased with what she had done. Nor was
Baby Miracle terribly interested. She merely rolled her eyes, wobbled
her bit of a trunk, and squealed in a fashion which might mean anything.
So, while half the menagerie force went forth to corral Mamma Mary, the
other half hid Baby Miracle and decided what should be done. The most
important thing, of course, was food. Fred Alispaw, the superintendent,
got an idea, rushed for a telephone, called the biggest dairy company,
and ordered a milking machine. In the meanwhile, Baby Miracle had given
a squawk or two of disgust and flopped to a pile of canvas, where
it tried to die while three animal keepers massaged it to keep up
circulation and a veterinary gave it a strychnine injection.
[Illustration: BABY MIRACLE, A FEW WEEKS BEFORE SHE DECIDED TO LEAVE
THIS TEMPESTUOUS WORLD.]
[Illustration: LION TRIPLETS.]
By this time Mamma Mary and the milking machine had arrived at the
menagerie house almost simultaneously. The contraption was brought
forth and hooked on, while Mamma Mary rolled her eyes and appeared
to wonder what it was all about. When the thing began to work she
evidently came to some conclusion, celebrating her discovery by kicking
over the machine, knocking down the three men who were endeavoring to
manipulate it, and for good measure overturning a tiger den. Which
added to the general celebration.
In the meanwhile, Baby Miracle was having another sinking spell and
things were becoming serious. The rest of the herd was called into
action to save the baby’s life. Mamma Mary was chained fore, aft,
and sideways to other elephants, each with his trainer to hold him
in place, and the milking machine once more was installed. This time
enough milk was obtained to give Baby Miracle a little confidence
in this turbulent existence into which she had entered, and infant
elephant stock ran higher.
It continued to soar for three days. Then Mamma Mary discovered that
she could strain her muscles to such an extent that the machine could
milk and milk and continue to milk without results. Which she did, and
the machine went back to the dairy company. However, by this time, Baby
Miracle had assumed a sort of don’t-care attitude and was willing
to try anything once. The first was a bottle equipped with a regular
“calf nipple” and filled with a combination of one pint of cow’s milk,
mixed with condensed cream, topped off by a pint of rice gruel, fed
by the pouring system. All of which, it was found, must be heated to
a temperature of 85 degrees. It appears that even baby elephants have
their tastes.
Again everything looked rosy, and after a week or so, an attempt was
made to put the disowned child with the herd. But inasmuch as Mamma
Mary again took a look at her child and knocked down two elephants in
her attempts to murder it, other plans were decided upon. Baby Miracle
was put into a padded cage where she got her bottle and her gruel every
four hours, until she finally refused.
Somebody thought of goat’s milk, and two tuberculin tested goats were
purchased. The goats were willing, but Baby Miracle wasn’t. So the
goats were sold.
Then it was discovered that Baby Miracle liked ice-cream cones, and
there was joy again. The milk in these would be nourishing, and with a
pint or so of boiled rice, things might be better.
But they weren’t. After the menagerie superintendent had poured castor
oil down the child’s throat for a day and a half in an attempt to bring
it back to normalcy, he guessed that he’d better cut out the cones.
There was only one thing left,--the advertised baby foods. All of which
were tried, with results not so good. So, in desperation, Alispaw
experimented again with the original concoction, and Baby Miracle
responded.
All her previous dislike vanished, she was given a nurse from among
the menagerie attendants, who took her for walks by day and slept in
her cage by night. She learned to play with a rope, to amuse herself
by wadding up a mass of hay and throwing it high into the air, while
the watchful Lonnie, her keeper, pried open her jaws after each
experiment to see that she’d gotten none of the nasty stuff in her
throat. But it was all no use. Twenty-three weeks passed in which “the
millionaire baby,” as she was called around the show, received every
attention. Every possible thing was guarded against; the veterinary
passed up other cases to watch the progress of Baby Miracle. Even her
food was weighed, to see how much of it her stomach was assimilating.
In reward for which, Baby Miracle showed up one day with a hacking
cough and passed onward, perhaps the only elephant in captivity to live
twenty-three weeks on a circus without having tasted the delights of a
peanut.
Quite different was the story of Rusty. Baby Miracle weighed two
hundred pounds, got every possible attention and finally was stuffed to
grace the reception room of a big Western newspaper until a heartless
mob came along and carried poor Baby Miracle away to an unknown resting
spot. Rusty weighed about a pound and a half, but he had his own ideas
about getting along in life. He was a tiny rhesus monkey, undersized
even for that species, and the object of torment for the whole cage.
His mother was tubercular; this disease causes the death of nearly
ninety per cent. of the rhesus monkeys brought to this country. She was
too weak to defend it. The result being that Rusty was picked on by
every member of the big cage, bitten, twitted, tormented, even by its
own father. Then, one day, the mother died.
The baby clung to the body of its sole protector until the menagerie
men took the inanimate body away. Then, a tiny mite in the midst of a
horde of ruffians, Rusty strove to stand his ground. In vain. His own
father, one of the “cage bosses,” led in the ruffianism, pulling out
his hair, snarling at him, biting him and slapping him. Rusty went from
grating to grating, from trapeze to bar, while the rest of the cage
followed him, with the exception of one, a female who a month or so
before had lost her own baby. And Rusty, as he fled chattered to her,
grinned at her, then when the tormenting reached its highest pitch,
jumped straight for her, snuggling into her arms.
For a moment she did not respond. But Rusty chattered on. The “cage
bosses”--every monkey house has three or four of these bullies who
appear to take a delight in making life as rough as possible for the
weaker ones--gathered about him, pulling and picking at him, and
incidentally taking a few pokes at the babyless monkey who had allowed
him to come to her arms. For just so long she stood it, her arms
gradually tightening about the little orphan. Then, at last, the mother
nature of her reached the ascendency.
That was a bad day for the bosses. She bit them until their sides were
red with blood. Larger than ordinary and stronger, she knocked them
from one side of the cage to the other, chased them to the trapezes,
and clung by her teeth to any legs that happened to be trailing;
finally she drove the whole outfit into a corner, there to chatter
her defiance to them in a monkey harangue that evidently had some
purpose--and wonderful results. Rusty never was bothered again. What is
more, the stepmother accepted him as her own child, and affectionate
mother and good son--as simians go--they still occupy the monkey house
in peace.
So goes the story of the menagerie kid; but varied as the youthful
occupants of the cages may be, there is one thing in which they share
alike, the kindergarten. Their schooling begins almost the moment
they are able to understand; the fool camel is “halter broke” so his
mother can bite him on the head at will; the lions, tigers, leopards
and other cat animals are taught not to “fight” the feeding fork or
the cage scrapers, by which the dens are cleaned; the monkeys are
taught not to reach between the bars of their cage; the hippopotamus
is brought out of its den as often as possible, so that it will not
shake itself to death in fear of the menagerie crowds--for the hippo
is the most easily frightened of all animals; the elephant is made
“hook-wise,” or taught that the pointed bull-hook is merely a thing
devised to guide it and not something to cause pain; the zebra is
walked time and again past the lion cages to assure him that the
inmates will not kill him, and so it goes throughout the whole list,
each animal being taught the rudiments which he must know before any
kind of arena training can even be considered. Withal, it is a tedious
task, expressed best perhaps by one of the menagerie attendants during
the auspicious advent of Baby Miracle:
“Gosh! I sure wish all these here punk animals could be borned grown
up!”
CHAPTER V
THE DOG WAGON
Night on the circus lot. The big top, shadowy, dim, even in the glare
of the electric arcs atop the ticket wagon, had fallen, now to lay, a
flattened mushroom upon the ground, while hurrying canvasmen unfastened
the lacings, and the barking lot superintendent prepared for the
lowering of the poles. One by one the big wagons were trucking toward
the first smoking torch at a corner of the grounds, the beacon light
to guide tired horses and men toward the loading runs, half a mile
away. The “led stock” and “ring stock” already had made its way toward
the horse cars. The “bull cars” were loaded, except for the three
work-elephants which had been left on the lot for emergency, and which
now, gray hulks against the shafts of light, were released at last,
and obedient to the hook of the bull-man, were trundling in satisfied
fashion toward their rest for the night. The menagerie superintendent
approached.
“That mutt still on the job?” he asked.
The bull-tender nodded.
“Yeh--over there.”
Something stirred in the shadows, came forward a few steps, hesitated,
then hurried into hiding again. The superintendent grunted.
“Looks okay. Watch him at the cars. If he stacks up, join him out.”
Again a nod. Then the elephant line went on, while the shadowy trailer
followed in the darkness, fearful of coming too close, yet equally
fearful, it seemed, of dropping too far behind. It had been thus for
three nights now--a disappearance in the daytime, a reappearance at
night, when the steel loading runs were down and the railroad yards a
clatter of shouts and grinding steel, as, one after another, the wagons
of the big show were loaded for the night.
Down into the glare of the electric lights and the carbides. Down to
the shouts of the razorbacks and “polers,” the clatter of wagons, the
hollow pounding of horses traveling up the runs to the stock cars.
At last the “bull” or elephant car. The three big hulks clambered
upward--and the bull-man waited, standing far aside in the darkness.
Again a moment of hesitation, then a creeping something came forward,
to slink to the runway, to pause, one foot slightly raised in
preparation for progress or flight; but there came no sound from the
bull-man; nothing save the shifting of the big brutes within the car
and the crunching of hay. The interloper took a step forward, paused
again, moved on once more, then with a sudden dart was inside the car
and hidden in the hay. The bull-man turned.
“Hey, Deafy!” he called to a passing property man. “Tell that there dog
punk I can fill up that empty compartment in the wagon to-morrow. Just
joined one out.”
Which meant that the next day there would be a new occupant for the
dog wagon of the circus, a new applicant for training, a new “trouper”
among the canine personnel of the show. One that would respond to every
command, for the simple reason that he had chosen his own life; that he
had run away with the circus because he loved it and wanted it, because
he was a circus dog at heart, with the love of trouping ingrained
within him. Without knowing it, he had passed an examination and proved
himself worthy of a life where there can be no weaklings. The dog
wagon of a circus is the custodian of many a dog history, and of the
inside story of many a queer quirk in a dog nature. And to the name of
practically every occupant can be placed the notation, “Present through
his own knowledge and desire.”
To those of you who watch the various trained-dog acts of a circus, it
may seem a difficult thing to procure the various performers; perhaps
you’ve often wondered where they came from, how they were trained; and
in some cases you may have sorrowed a bit at the “poor animals” forced
to travel day by day, earning their living by the performance of their
tricks. All of which is very sweet and pretty, but it is wrong in one
particular. In seventy-five cases out of a hundred, the circus dog is
there either because he has insisted on being there, and persisted even
in undergoing hardships to be able to pass his examination, or because
the fact that he was wanted by the circus has saved him from the
chloroform room of the pound-keeper. The circus dog as a general rule
comes from only two sources,--the dog pound, or the voluntary “joining
out” of a canine who comes to the circus of his own accord and insists
upon staying with it, even to the extent of “bumming” his way from town
to town! With the exception of the twenty-five per cent. representing
the dogs belonging to the individual performers, which perhaps have
been purchased from other performers, or trainers, or which, like
their human counterparts of the circus world, are of a long string
of performing ancestors, the offspring taking up the life of their
forbears and “carrying on the act.” In these instances, the values run
high; Alf Loyal’s dogs, for instance, with the Ringling Brothers-Barnum
and Bailey Circus, are worth a young fortune, while Abe Aronson’s
“rabbit” and “elephant” dogs are insured for several thousand dollars.
The same is true of other canine troupes belonging to individuals. But
even here and there among these valued dogs are others, performing as
well and valued as highly, whose past could be written in a continuous
chapter of back alleys and weird escapes from the dog catcher.
Nor is every dog which joins the circus taken along merely as a
performer. Quite the opposite. There are often more canines outside
the ring around a big show, each with his or her job, than ever appear
under the big top. There is the elephant dog, for instance, trained to
remain around the big animals, to trot under their heels, to appear
without warning from one side or another, or to stand in front of them
and bark or snarl, to sleep with them in the big bull car at nights,
and chief of all, to keep other dogs from the vicinity of that herd.
Upon that dog, usually a nondescript, does the safety of the show often
rest, and for one very good reason: elephants seem to form a strange
fascination for dogs, while to an elephant, a dog is a fearsome beast,
breeding fear and trepidation, and forming one of the best excuses ever
invented for a panic! Hence the elephant dog, to which the big mammals
become accustomed, and upon which they eventually come to look upon as
a sort of protector, acting in the final analysis in the same fashion
as a pacifier to a mammoth baby.
Then too, there are the menagerie dogs; just dogs, with apparently no
purpose in life except to trot around the menagerie tent, or sleep
beneath a cage. But they all have their duties. There are the ones
which accompany the led stock--any animal which can be led by a halter
is known in the circus as “led” stock--and which know every member
of that department. More than once, when on the check-up at night, a
zebra or llama is found to be missing, the led stock dog has departed
also, not to appear again until that missing animal is accounted for
and presented at the runs, with the dog nipping at its heels! In circus
history there is even the case of Scotty, a little Scotch terrier
rescued from a dog pound, her puppies chloroformed, and a baby lion
given into her keeping to raise. Which task she performed with the
result that Kaiser is now a feature lion of the menagerie of a big
circus, while Scotty sleeps in a little silk-lined casket, her life
shortened because of her faithful sacrifices to a king of beasts.
Around the menagerie it seems that the dog forms the natural companion
for any animal. No matter whether its breed be feline or canine, equine
or bovine, when a companion is needed, a new dog is added to the circus
roster. Seldom does that dog fail, even though the course of its
faithfulness should lead to danger or even to death!
[Illustration: COLLIES MAKE EXCELLENT CIRCUS DOGS.]
[Illustration: WAITING TO ENTER THE BIG SHOW.]
Not so many years ago, one of the feminine trapeze performers of
a western circus was crossing the lot to her evening meal in the
cookhouse, when suddenly she turned with the knowledge of something
trailing at her heels. A moment more and she had halted, to survey in
pitying fashion a small, woolly, half-starved mongrel, which, with
whining and excessive wagging of tail, was seeking to inveigle her into
a capture. But dogs, as pets, are not welcomed on a circus. The trapeze
performer shook her head.
“Run along, pups!” she commanded, “I can’t take you!”
To which the mongrel paid no attention whatever. He had determined that
here was surcease from hunger and privations, and he persisted in his
appeals. The circus woman shrugged her shoulders.
“Well,” came finally, “I guess I can get you a square meal anyway.”
Whereupon she gathered him in her arms, hid him under the loose
dressing-room cape which she was wearing, smuggled him into the
cookhouse and surreptitiously fed him.
By that time, the pup had won his battle. Once out of the cookhouse,
the performer hurried to the dog wagon. But the “dog boy” shook his
head. In the first place, the circus didn’t need any more dogs, and
besides that, every compartment in the wagon--a regular circus vehicle
fitted with thirty or more small, square boxes which, bedded with
straw, form a resting place for the show canines at night--was filled.
The performer turned toward the menagerie and its superintendent. There
a different welcome was waiting.
“Gosh!” said the menagerie boss, “just what I’ve been looking for.
First day this season there haven’t been a dozen dogs hanging around,
waiting to be picked up. Always happens, just when you need ’em worst.
I’ve got to have a companion for that Pat kangaroo. Lucy, his mate,
died this morning.”
So a bargain was made that the new dog should be the companion of Pat,
the kangaroo, from evening until after parade time in the mornings,
when it was to go into the keeping, for the afternoon hours, of the
performer who had rescued it from starvation. Into the kangaroo cage
went the little woolly mongrel, to bark in excited fashion for a few
moments, then to edge forward in gingerly survey of the timid, grieving
thing, which, by this time, had retreated to the farthest part of
its cage. There was an exchange of dog and kangaroo courtesies, and
evidently a few greetings in the universal language of animaldom. Late
that night, when the superintendent inspected the boarding up of the
various dens, there lay Pat and Dingy as he had been christened, fast
asleep. Friendship had been effected, and the life of a kangaroo
saved. For a time, at least. But tragedy was in the offing.
The next day the performer came for her dog, to take it to the dressing
tent, there to pet and feed it, while in the menagerie a kangaroo
watched in timid, excited fashion for its return. Night came, and the
dog was restored to the den, to hurry to its strange cage-mate and
frolic about it, while the kangaroo gave a greeting equally effusive.
It was the beginning of a routine which progressed to such an extent
that there came the time when the performer had only to release the dog
from its chain in the dressing tent and turn to her work of packing,
safe in the knowledge that Dingy would take a straight line for the
menagerie and the kangaroo cage, there to stand and bark until some
attendant opened the door and lifted him within. Then came tragedy.
One night the circus reeled and tossed and struggled in the midst of a
storm. Peaks lowered, workers struggling about in mud to their knees,
horses hook-roped to every wagon, work-elephants wallowing through the
mire, the big show strove its best to free itself from the stickiness
of a “soft lot” and hurry on to make good the next-day promises of the
billboards, a hundred and fifty miles away. In the menagerie, the last
of the dens was being boarded up, when an attendant suddenly paused,
looked within, then hurried for the superintendent.
“Dingy ain’t showed up yet,” he announced. “Ain’t seen nothin’ of him,
an’ Pat’s jumpin’ around his cage an’ barkin’--all excited. It’s way
past time for Dingy--I guess he knows it.”
The superintendent gave an order.
“Tear over to the dressing tent, quick. Maybe Miss Laird didn’t turn
him loose.”
But the menagerie boy returned with the report that Dingy had started
from the dressing tent at his usual hour, apparently on his customary
beeline for the kangaroo cage. There was only one explanation: the dog
had decided upon a different life and had deserted the show. Up went
the boards of the kangaroo cage, the animal leaping excitedly about
within, emitting its queer, frightened bark, sure evidence that it too
knew something was wrong. All the way to the runs it continued to thump
about, to cry out, but there was no remedy. Dingy was gone.
An hour later, at the elephant cars, the superintendent, muddy,
bedraggled, tired, was watching the loading of the last bull. There
came the dim view of a moving figure in the darkness, then the voice of
the menagerie boy.
“Got your spotlight, Boss?” he asked. “I got Dingy here. Found him down
at the main runs--crawled all the way, I guess. Smashed up.”
There came the gleam of electricity, then a long moment of silence.
Dingy had not run away. Instead, in the muddiness and darkness of the
circus lot, he evidently had floundered in the course of a plunging,
struggling team. Half of his left side, and of his left hind leg, was
literally torn away. Evidently the menagerie had departed when he had
summoned the strength to reach the place where it had rested that day.
But he had followed, crawling, for nearly a mile to the circus runs.
Dingy died that night. Pat died three weeks later, refusing the
companionship of another dog, refusing food, even water. Animal grief,
so menagerie men will tell you, is the most intense grief in all the
world.
Nor do animals easily forget their cage-mates, especially dogs. Out on
the Selig Zoo in Los Angeles are a lioness and a dog living in the same
cage, against every effort of the keepers. They were born on the same
day, several years ago, and each later became motherless. In an effort
to maintain the life of each through companionship, they were placed
together and grew to maturity. Then there came the fear that canine and
feline nature would assert itself, with a consequent battle and death,
with the results that efforts were made to separate the pair.
They took the dog away, far into another part of the gardens, and there
gave it luxuries it never had known before. But the dog did not want
luxuries. It wanted only that lion. While, in the lion’s den, a tawny
beast roared and bellowed and beat itself against the bars in a fury
of excitement; nor could even the distance of the width of the gardens
really separate them. The dog could hear the roaring of the lion, and
answered in staccato barks and in howlings. The lioness caught the call
and answered in turn. Day and night it was the same. The menagerie
men returned them to each other, waited a week and attempted it once
more. In vain. Then, for a space of three months, they tried a scheme
of separation, for an hour at a time, then two hours, then three, with
success apparently before them. But when the first separation of a
night came, the old remonstrance began again and was continued. They
were partners, that lioness and that dog, and partners they are to-day,
their battle won, cage-mates forever as far as the menagerie men are
concerned. The dog appears perfectly happy. It has no desires for the
usual canine pleasures; running and playing mean nothing to it. It has
a cage nature, a cage appearance, if such a thing can be, and it cares
for nothing except the company of its leonine companion.
But to return to the circus and its dogs, and its methods of gaining
possession of them. One hears much of the boy who runs away to join
the circus, a thing which rarely happens, for circuses are business
institutions. In the first place, they don’t want young boys. They need
persons grown to sufficient strength to possess the necessary muscle
to endure the hardships and work of a circus lot, and that strength
doesn’t come until a boy is old enough to go about where he chooses.
One hears little of the dogs which run away with a circus, and yet
there is a set formula about the menagerie, a question asked almost
daily:
“Shall we watch for a mutt to-day?”
Because there is hardly a day in which some dog does not attempt to
“join out,” and through his own efforts, seek to attach himself to
the show. For all of it there is a reason. If there is one thing that
a dog loves, it is horses. If there is another, it is the sound of a
band. And if there is a third, it is a general air of excitement and
hurly-burly. The next time the circus comes to town, watch the band
wagons of the parade. You’ll find in the wake, at the sides, and at the
rear, a collection of from one to twenty dogs, trotting happily along,
tongue lolling from open jaws, tail aloft, step as springy as that of a
high-school horse in the ring. The circus represents to the average dog
a sort of heaven where things go exactly the way he wants them to go,
and he deliberately chooses the show as a permanent place of abode and
insists upon his choice until the circus allows him his desires.
For the dog who goes to the circus undergoes a period of apprenticeship
which lasts for days and for hundreds of miles of travel. The “likely”
dog usually follows the parade to the circus grounds, there to loaf
about under the cages, or trail some particular hostler or menagerie
man until that person takes cognizance of him. Which doesn’t happen
until night comes, when the circus has traveled to the train, and the
dog is still in evidence.
If the circus is “full up,” the dog stays behind. But if there is an
opening for a good, faithful dog that likes the show life, there is a
gruff command just as the “high-ball” signal sounds, then a scramble as
the dog is tossed to one of the flat cars, there to find a bed as best
he may, beneath a wagon, or upon a pile of canvas. Thus he spends his
first night, in the open upon a jolting flat car, with every possible
opportunity to think it all over and decide whether or not he really
wants this rough-and-tumble existence. The next morning, when the
circus goes to the lot--and if he goes with it--he may be fed or he
may not. Usually not. If that dog wants the circus life sufficiently,
he’ll find a way to exist and to remain. When night comes again, if he
is a weakling, he’ll not be present at the loading runs, having found
an easier existence. But in nine cases out of ten, there he’ll be,
whining and begging to be put aboard again. When the third night comes,
he usually discovers a means of getting aboard himself, and when he
shows up on the fourth morning, satisfied and happy, there is a gruff
verdict, and a new occupant for the dog wagon. He has won his place as
a circus dog, just as any candidate wins a position, through merits,
and being the “dog fitted for the place.”
So much for the dog which voluntarily “joins out.” The other type--the
one which comes to the circus as a result of a circus demand--is
perhaps a far more fortunate creature, even though he doesn’t know it.
For he has been saved from death; his place of collection is the dog
pound.
Only the mutt, the mongrel, the dog which by his actions, his
appearance and his mannerisms displays plainly that he is only a stray
and worthless, so far as dogs go, is allowed to “join out” in the
usual fashion. The circus doesn’t care for lawsuits, or be attached in
the next town for having “stolen” the pedigreed pet of some mourning
dog-owner. The result is that a dog with a collar, or one which
appears too sleek or well fed, is not welcome about a circus lot. The
friendship of the hostler, the performer or the menagerie man is not
for him. It is too dangerous; and besides, there is an easier way,--the
dog pound.
There the circus man goes to look over the collection of animals which
have been picked up on the streets, and for which the time-limit for
redemption has passed. For certain acts, there must be certain dogs;
for “pad work,” where the dog seizes the clown by the seat of the
trousers, or does a “strong-jaw” act all his own, by being pulled to
the top of the tent while hanging by his teeth to a leather pad, there
must be the bull dog, preferably a large-sized, not-too-highly-bred
dog of the Boston bull type. For the races there must be Russian wolf
hounds; for hind-leg walking, there must be the collie or the Spitz;
while for general, all-round performing excellence, there are the fox
terriers. And around the circus, you’ll find many a pedigreed dog of
these various species, but rarely a dog with a pedigree. Their pasts
are hidden, owner and ancestor. The pound-keeper usually forms the wall
between.
Nor is the dog which comes to the big show a circus dog immediately
upon his arrival. Instead, for a week or so, he is a dejected
individual, snarled at, mistreated by the rest of the pack, tied to his
own picket pin, apart from the remainder at feeding time, jailed in
his compartment of the dog wagon when the rest are liberated. And all
for the reason that there is nothing so clannish as the dog pack of a
circus. Some way, the members of that pack seem to realize that they
are occupants of a different life; apart from the common, ordinary dog
which knows only a home and a master. A circus dog never fights singly.
He has the whole pack to back him, the wolf instinct strongly to the
fore. When a town dog crosses the trail of a circus dog, it is usually
a battle to the death.
Therefore, until the regular pack becomes accustomed to the new
arrival, he is nothing but a hated “towner,” regarded with the strange
sense of enmity which runs all the way through the circus world. Day
after day, however, the other dogs see the newcomer taken into the
ring during the interim between the matinée and the night show, for
training. Gradually there comes the understanding that he too is a
circus dog; then the growling and snarling ceases. No longer does he
stand apart at his picket pin. He is a part of the pack, as ready as
any of the rest to set upon and kill any “towner dog” that comes his
way.
And once a circus dog, always a circus dog, for the instinct never
dies, even though it may lead into strange channels; once, in fact,
to a story of dogdom that has had few equals even in fiction,--the
narrative of Nosey, and an instinct of the spring, when circus loves
comes strongest, which turned her to a thing of the wild, never to
reach civilization again. Somewhere now, in the wild country of
Northwestern Colorado, where the mountainous rises stretch mile on
mile, where there are still bears to be found in the berry patches at
autumn, and the deer and elk crash through the underbrush about the
great rock-slides, is Nosey, no longer a dog as dogs go.
Perhaps the story is best from the beginning. No one except a circus
man really understands the importance of a dog to an elephant herd.
It means as much as steam gauge to a boiler, or a steering wheel to
an automobile. If there is anything in the world that an elephant
loves, it is to become frightened. The old story of the mouse and the
elephant is true to a certain extent, and the thing of things with
which to shake an elephant absolutely from his foundations is a dog.
Perhaps it is a natural antipathy: perhaps it is the fact that dogs
have a habit of going where they choose and since elephants are so big
and cumbersome that they cannot readily see behind them, they are more
easily frightened by something woolly darting between their legs, or
appearing apparently from nowhere under their trunks.
However, a dog is the elephant’s Nemesis, and to the wise circus man,
the only cure is the disease itself. Hence every menagerie has several
non-descripts whose sole job is to be constantly about the elephants,
and by their presence to reassure the great beasts and keep them
reminded that the things which are moving about them are only dogs and
not some fearsome thing to start them on a panic. At the loading runs,
of all places, are those dogs necessary; otherwise, a dog fight, or the
appearance of any street mongrel, might start a stampede that would
wreck a town.
It happened one night on a big show, shortly before the close of the
season in 1916--the town was a small place in Texas--that the menagerie
superintendent noticed something small and yellow stealthily following
the elephant herd from the grounds to the loading runs, there to
evade the protective sallies of the old elephant dog, and dart first
toward one elephant man, then another, in an effort to gain at least
momentary notice. But the show was “full up” on dogs; the menagerie
superintendent had given orders only that morning that no more were
to be taken on. Besides, the bull-men saw that the intruder was
undoubtedly of good stock, a half-grown female of the Chow breed, and
circus men, as has been mentioned before, are skittish of pedigreed
volunteers. So they merely shunted the dog aside, and with gruff
commands drove her from the runways when she sought to evade them and
crawl into the elephant car. Finally the doors were closed, the tired
elephant men went to their bunks, and the little waif was left in
darkness.
But luck played with her. She remained beside the elephant car,
waiting, whining. A passing “razorback” or car-loader halted, reflected
a moment, decided that one of the show’s elephant dogs had been
forgotten in the loading, and tossed her upon a flat car. The next
morning, surprised elephant men noticed her again “on the lot,” a
hundred miles from their starting point of the night before, loitering
at the edge of the canvas, peeking through when the wind raised the
side walls, then at times seeking to come within, only to be driven
away by the old elephant dog, watchful of every passing canine. That
night she again waited in the darkness, and the next morning--how
no one knows--she once more made her appearance on a show grounds,
seventy-five miles farther on.
It was too much persistence even for a circus that didn’t need an extra
dog. The elephant men halted now and then in their work to give her a
pat of encouragement. Even the old elephant dog relented, and watchful,
a bit suspicious in his hospitality, allowed her to come within the
menagerie tent and sit for a few moments at the head of the picket
line. A week later Nosey had won her place with the show, for the rest
of the season at least.
Nosey because she had nosed her way into the circus, nosed her way into
the cookhouse, where she had inveigled the busy chefs and hurrying
flunkeys to toss her enough food to sustain life, nosed her way past
the guardianship of the elephant dog and into the affections of the
menagerie men. For the rest of the season and the winter, at least, she
was installed as a fixture, and when the show went into quarters at
Denver, Nosey went also, content to bed herself down in an unobtrusive
corner, to live upon the droppings from the chopping blocks as the
menagerie men cut the daily food of the lions, tigers and other cats,
content with anything, so that she might be near the things she
loved,--the inmates of the animal house. Through the winter the world
was hers; then spring came.
There was no room for Nosey this season. The animal superintendent
scratched his head, considered long, then telephoned a doctor who lived
in a suburb, some ten miles from town. She’d have a good time there;
the doctor drove to winter quarters, took Nosey into his arms and his
heart, and departed. The show went forth to the road. A month passed.
Then came a sorrowful letter from Denver. The dog had disappeared from
her new home. Shortly afterward a policeman had reported that he had
been forced to kill a dog of her description because of the evidences
of rabies. Around the menagerie the word passed that Nosey was dead.
On went the show, to its sallies into the North, its quick spurts into
the moneyed territories in the East, the long trail through the small
town of the “Death Trail” on its way to the Western coast, and finally
into the far South for the end of its season. Once more the railroad
yards of Denver were cluttered with wagons and horses and tableaus,
scarred from the mud and tribulations of bad lots and long hauls; it
was November again; the circus was home for the long months of winter,
and the hurried activities of refurnishing that it might be ready for
the road when the bluebirds sang again. And with the arrival of the
first wagon at winter quarters a gaunt, half-starved thing darted from
her position at the animal-house door, closed and locked until the
menagerie superintendent should arrive. She weaved in wild circles,
rushing to the horses, then darting away again, running to the door of
the animal house, whining, scratching, then swerving away once more;
a beast which acted as one crazed, circling and twisting in a perfect
hysteria of excitement. The long line of elephants came up the snowy
street; the dog yowled and barked, rushed to the animal men, then
whirled away again. The bull line was halted. Word was rushed to the
superintendent.
“There’s a mad dog in the yard there. Better bump it off before it
stampedes these here bulls.”
The superintendent reached into a wagon box for his revolver, then
carefully went forward. The dog sighted him, barked joyously, then
once more began those excitement-crazed circles, a gaunt, weakened
thing which swirled again and again, at last to drop from sheer
exhaustion. The revolver was raised. The superintendent stepped
forward--closer--closer--then halted!
Nosey! he called in surprised tones, and strength came once more to
the weakened dog. She turned; then crawling, she made her way to him,
to lick his hands, cry and whine her happiness, then with wavering
steps to turn again toward the menagerie house door. The superintendent
whirled.
“Bring on those bulls,” he shouted. “There isn’t anything wrong with
this dog, except that it’s half-starved.”
The door of the animal house was unlocked. In shot the dog, to make the
rounds of the place, to investigate everything with quick sniffings,
even to refuse food in her excitement, and at last to flop exhausted
upon a pile of hay at the end of the picket line. When visiting
neighbors, welcoming the circus home again, came that afternoon to
winter quarters, they told the true story of Nosey, the story of
a shadowy canine which had appeared three months before at winter
quarters, which had refused every approach of friendship lest she again
be taken from the place she loved; which had haunted the place day and
night, gaining her food as best she could, evading every living thing
until she had become known to the whole neighborhood as “The Phantom
Dog.” The policemen had made a mistake in his description; Nosey had
merely gone back to her circus, content to starve if need be, in
waiting for its return.
There was no question about her place with the show now. She was the
circus favorite, with the big bull herd as her especial charge. There
even came the time when jealousy arose between her and Mutt, the
regular elephant dog, a duel which was fought out; then Mutt decided
to take up another position in the menagerie, leaving Nosey in supreme
command.
She ran that elephant herd as a general would command an army. She went
with them to the cars at night, she saw that they were loaded; then
crawled in with them--the herd mascot. She guarded them during the
day; the first sally of a town dog toward them meant a slashing attack
which invariably sent the intruder hurrying away, happy to be anywhere
except around elephants. When circus visitors approached too close for
their own safety, it was Nosey, who, with a snarl, sent them back to a
common-sense position. A stampede happened; an elephant was lost. It
was Nosey who trailed her, rushed back to the circus lot, found the
superintendent, then led him to where the stray had been located. There
came the time when Nosey even went into the ring with her big charges.
Then came a change.
The superintendent and his wife decided to leave the circus and live
upon a ranch, far in the Elkhorn Range in Northwestern Colorado.
Nosey, with two other circus dogs, was taken along. It was winter;
the temperature went to thirty and forty below; Nosey apparently was
content to remain in the warm ranch house and wait for spring, when
undoubtedly there would be the circus again.
When the warm days came, when the snow of the high range began to
crust, making travel easy, Nosey would wander forth, look down into the
warmer country below, then turn to her master and mistress in pitiful
whining; as if to ask when they would troupe again, when the band
would play once more. But there was only the work of the ranch, never
the sound of music, nor the blatter of the midway. One day Nosey was
missing.
For two days they saw nothing of her. Then one morning, the former
superintendent, traveling the miles to the mail box on the main road,
saw a wary coyote pack, and with it something yellow and furry, unlike
the rest. He called to her, and Nosey came forward, wagging her tail,
apparently content to accompany him once more. For two days she
remained at home, then once more disappeared. This time for the summer.
They did not see her again until late the next fall, when, as though
she never had been away, she trotted into the house, made the rounds
of the place, nipped at the trousers leg of the former superintendent,
ran out the door, came back, ran away again, and returned in an effort
to lead the man forth. At last he followed, with his wife, far over the
hills, to a hollow log where Nosey halted in proud maternity. Within,
yowling and tumbling, were four half-breed coyote puppies.
They gathered up the babies and took them home, Nosey trotting happily
beside them. But again it was only a momentary return to civilization.
Once more she disappeared, taking her puppies with her, this time in
finality. Up there in the Elkhorn a former menagerie superintendent
and his wife set out food when the heavy snows come and scan the hills
when the coyotes shriek, but Nosey evidently has settled upon her own
existence. Once came a howling in the night, close to the house, a
track in the snow; but that was all. Nosey has not been seen since the
day she left with her puppies, to “troupe” with the coyotes.
Quite the opposite to the story of Nosey is that of Mike, one of a trio
of performing fox terriers with a small circus. The day was unusually
hot and sultry; every animal on the show was tired and logy--the
trainers were as fatigued as the dogs. In cracking his whip for the
“flash” of the act, the terrier trainer miscalculated and caught Mike a
terrific blow across the back and flanks.
The dog did not understand that it all was a mistake. He only knew that
he had been punished when he did not deserve it. A yelp of pain, a rush
and he had disappeared from the ring, not to be found again. The show
left town, a new dog was broken for the act, and Mike all but forgotten.
Two years later, the show returned to the stand where Mike had
disappeared. The same dog boy was in charge of the wagon, the same
trainer handling his trio of fox terriers. Late afternoon came, and
with it a tramp fox terrier, dirty, bony, and rough-coated, which
trotted upon the circus lot with an air of easy familiarity, sniffed
about the horse tents, investigated the dressing room, then found the
way to the dog boy and sought by every possible form of dog language to
make himself known. For a long time it all was a mystery, then the dog
boy grinned.
“Hello, Mike!” he announced. “Decided to come back, huh?”
Mike it was! What was more, when they took him into the ring and gave
him cues which he had not heard in two years, he responded almost
immediately, doing his flips, stretching for the “bridge” and returning
to his various “stands” and “set-ups” as though he never had been away.
Mike is still on the job with the circus; more, so faithful is he that
he is not confined at a picket line as are the other dogs. He has had
his taste of the “towner’s world,” and the circus is all he wants.
In fact, faithfulness seems to be the quality of qualities with dogs
who join the circus. Several years ago, George Brown, an English clown,
who with his performing fox terriers long has been a feature with
all the big shows, was stricken with ptomaine poisoning and taken
to the hospital. That afternoon one of his dogs, whose act consisted
of being “dressed” in a miniature horse’s head and tail, and doing a
high-school act around the hippodrome track, suddenly rebelled against
the substitute clown who had taken Brown’s place and scurried under the
side wall, horse’s head and all. To the dressing tent he went, to dart
in frenzied fashion up and down the aisles of trunks, searching for his
master; then before any one could catch him, once more he disappeared.
That afternoon and night a frantic dog boy and all of Clown Alley
searched in vain for George Brown’s dog. The circus left town without
him, and a frightened dog boy waited in trembling for the return of the
clown. But when George Brown came back to the show, there was the dog
under his arm!
“I thought I had ’em,” he announced joyfully. “It was two days after
the show’d gone and I was able to sit up. Happened to look out the
window, and there was a horse, about ten inches high, running around
the hospital lawn, like he was trying to follow a trail. After I’d
got my senses, I whistled. Sure enough, it was the pup! Hadn’t had
anything to eat or drink for two days; was just about gone when the
nurse brought him in. Couldn’t take anything, you know, on account of
that horse’s head over his own. Been following my trail all the time,
I guess. Next time I get sick,” and George Brown blinked slightly,
“those pups go with me!”
Nor is that instance any more marked than the one of Ragsy, who was
nothing to the circus, yet everything. Ragsy belonged to a “skinner” or
teamster, and she had a place all her own in the life of the big show.
Circus folk live in a small circle. The world is theirs to travel, yet
the world really means nothing to them; the happenings of that little
universe all their own are the ones which really count, and every
animal, every horse, every trifling incident in that circus is a part
of their lives. Ragsy played a big part.
She appeared one morning as the horse tents were being erected, one of
the innumerable dog waifs which always are about the show grounds. A
sorrel team seemed to attract her; she sat by it while the horses fed,
then when they were taken forth to parade, she went with them, trotting
beside them as though she had done it all her life. A queer, misshapen
little thing she was, of Skye terrier origin, and with an ingratiating,
“doggy” manner, which caused the driver to grin at her more than once
and call a word of encouragement as the team started back to the circus
grounds. Not that Ragsy needed it; she had turned with the team and
when they rested again in the big horse tents, there was Ragsy beside
them. That night, when the wagons were loaded and the big team had made
its two trips to the runs, Ragsy was there also, at last to brush
against the leg of the driver as he watched the loading of his stock
and prepared to crawl into the deck of the horse car above them, his
usual place of nightly abode. He started away, the plea of the dog
unnoticed, only to halt again. For she had whined and pawed at him. The
big “skinner” paused in contemplation.
“All right,” came at last. “Guess that there bunk’s big enough for me’n
you.”
That night Ragsy snoozed contentedly; she had joined the circus along
with her beloved sorrels. When dawn came, she was there beside them
again, not to leave them all day. Weeks passed. At last there came an
inspiration to the driver, and he lifted the little Skye to the back of
one of the sorrels, balancing her there for a time until she gained a
footing.
“I’ll just make a parade feature outen her,” he grinned to his fellow
skinners, and the idea worked! Ragsy fell off, but she was willing to
try again and again and again, until at last there came the time when
bugle call for parade meant as much to the dog as to the performers.
A jump to the double-trees, then to the tongue; another leap, and she
was on the back of the wheel sorrel, there to balance herself during
parade, while the crowds along the street gave credit to some circus
trainer, and the skinner, high atop his seat on the band wagon,
grinned in satisfaction. For he and Ragsy knew!
It became a matter of interest throughout the circus, that affection
of Ragsy for those sorrels. When the big eight-horse team was taken to
water, there was Ragsy. When the night hauls came, Ragsy was there too,
at last to augment her parade performance by riding wherever the big
team went. In mud or in rain, in storm or in sunshine, she never left
the big team. Those horses belonged to Ragsy as much as to the circus!
One day there came a break in Ragsy’s usual routine, that of watching
the horses wherever they went, even if only across a street. The show
was making a long jump; the stop for feeding and watering was to be a
short one, and the skinner, fearful lest Ragsy be left behind when the
“high-ball signal” sounded, decided that she must stay in the horse
cars. The dog objected. There was only one thing to do and with a
halter rope the skinner tied her in a manger, then hurried forth to his
work.
A half-hour later he returned with the horses, started up the runway,
halted, stared within, then rushed forward to come forth a moment
later, eyes averted, hands slowly knitting a picture of mute sorrow.
Another driver halted him. A nod over the shoulder, a voice gruffened
to hide the choke of it:
“I killed her. Dead--in there. Strangled tryin’ t’ get out o’ that
manger.”
They gathered from every part of the train, a community rallying to a
tragedy commensurate to the size of its little world. An actor took off
his hat, tossed a dollar into it and began to make the rounds. Within
the car, the skinner had wrapped the silent form of Ragsy in his coat
and laid it tenderly in his bunk on the deck above, to rest there until
such time as the labors of the circus might give him a chance to bury
her. That night, the show at last placed upon the lot, the skinners
gathered, silent, hesitant men, talking in a low tone as though they
were in the presence of human death instead of that of only an animal.
Some one fashioned a coffin. From the wardrobe wagon came silken and
soft materials, overflow from the making of costumes; performers
hurried from town with flowers--even to a blanket of roses--and beside
the horse tents they put Ragsy away. And unless it has been destroyed
by some one who does not know the circus heart, there still stands on
a circus lot in Southern Texas a heavy bit of yellow pine, with rough
words carved with a jackknife:
RaGsy
KiLLed Sep. 12-19.
SHe suRe Was Faithfull.
Faith--and no reward, save the glitter and spangles, and blaring of
bands; the noise of the big top, the confusion of the midway; that, it
seems, is all that the circus dog wants. And, too, that love seems to
be in the heart of every dog; the parade is always a conglomeration of
“houn’s,” traveling in the wake of the clown band wagon, or trotting
beside the horses. Nor is it necessary that the show be an outdoor
affair--just so it is a circus!
Last winter I was called back into the show business for a brief
season, that I might produce an indoor circus for a Denver lodge. It
was to be a big affair, running to nearly a hundred thousand dollars,
and it was necessary that the coming show, which was to be assembled
from all parts of the United States, have every bit of unusual
publicity possible. A member of the general committee, Ted Syman, came
forward with an idea.
“What’s the matter with a hound-dog parade, made up from mutts all over
the city?” he asked. “It’d give us a chance to carry publicity matter
through the streets, kids with banners and all that sort of thing.”
So the idea grew. There was to be a prize for the muttiest mutt dog in
town. A restaurant keeper appeared, with an offer to buy the dog for
twenty-five dollars. As a further incentive to the boys of town, the
owner and winner was to be allowed to appear at the head of the grand
entry each night with his dog. Nobody thought anything of how the mutt
himself would react; he was only a dog.
The parade was held. The mutt was selected, a woolly, squatty, pig-eyed
nondescript, dirty with the smudges of alleys and coal holes, the
muttiest mutt dog in town. The restaurant keeper bought him, for the
advertisement of it, possession to be gained at the end of the circus
week. The performance came. Dirt and all, the dog was turned over to
the clowns, four or five toy balloons attached to him, a banner tied
to his waving tail, and the clowns arranged for an escort. The first
entry came, and into the big ring trotted the mutt with the clowns, his
former boy owner beside him, the clowns trooping and frolicking about
him, and the band blaring behind him. There were lights, music, the
lifting step of horses, lumbering elephants; crowds, confusion; soon
we began to notice that the boy might be a bit late at Clown Alley for
his nightly decorations, but never the dog. For it was the dog, we saw,
that was gaining continued enjoyment out of it all. After the first
few nights it all began to pall upon the boy. But not the mutt. Twice
a night he made the circuit of that ring, banner-bedecked tail waving
in constant ecstasy, mouth open in excited panting, short legs bobbing,
eyes gleaming. Twice a night for a week; then the circus came to a
close.
Performers hurried away to begin their regular circus engagements.
Horses, performing animals, elephants and seals were loaded into
railroad cars for their trip back to winter quarters. The restaurant
keeper took his mutt and advertised it--for a day. Then the dog
disappeared.
But he did not go to the home of his former owner. Instead, one night,
nearly a week after the show was over, I happened to pass the big
doors of the darkened Civic Auditorium where the circus had been held.
Something woolly and squat, settled right against the door in waiting,
attracted my attention. I approached and called a name. It was the mutt.
I petted him and sought to call him away. In vain. I tried the door.
It was unlocked, and I opened it. We went within, the mutt and myself,
into the great, empty building, where only a few incandescents gleamed
dully to light the path of the watchman. The crowds were gone. The
dressing rooms were empty. The bandstand was devoid of brightly clothed
musicians. The big sawdust hippodrome track, as well as the rings and
stages, had disappeared. The circus was gone.
Slowly, as though in wonderment of a changed world, the mutt made the
rounds. He sniffed at the empty spaces where once the horses had been
quartered. He ran to where Snyder and Toto and Tillie, the performing
elephants, once had swayed at their ring pins. They were gone.
Downstairs he trotted, but the dressing rooms were empty and dark.
At last, as if convinced, he looked up at me and whined. I opened the
door. A moment of hesitation, then slowly, wobbling grudgingly upon
those stubby little legs, he trotted away, farther and farther, at last
to fade into the shadows. His day of glory was done.
CHAPTER VI
MENAGERIE “PSYCH-STUFF”
A circus is a great place for natural development. There’s not much
“book learnin’,” it’s true; but practicability is a thing which is
understood to the last degree. The sideshow talker may slaughter the
English language, but he practices more active psychology than the
professor who lectures upon the subject. The lot superintendent may
not know a monsoon from a period of barometric depression, but he
can tell hours beforehand whether the performance will be held in
fair weather or foul. The boss hostler never saw the interior of a
veterinary school, yet circus horses, despite their hardships, are
healthier, better cared for and sleeker than the usual occupants of a
riding school. So it goes throughout the whole establishment, up to and
including the trained animal department. In this latter are to be found
some of the strangest developments of all.
Perhaps, at some time or another, perched high upon the reserves,
you’ve seen the animal acts, and wondered a bit about them: why
certain beasts are selected for certain tricks and why others are not
used at all. Or perhaps the thought never entered your head; so far as
you were concerned, all animals were alike.
But to the man down in the steel arena, it has been a different story.
Everything--conforming to the rule of the circus--must have its reason.
The tiger which rides about the big cage on the back of an elephant
may be the best of its kind, leaping through flaming hoops without the
slightest concern, but utterly worthless in a simple “group number”
where it may have but a single duty during the whole act. In the first
place, that tiger may have a single-track mind, such as many persons
have, capable of assimilating only a certain routine. And on the other
hand, it may be a hardened criminal, with a murder lust so highly
developed that its very presence in a den with other animals would
mean a fight to the death. Or again, it may be mentally unbalanced, or
still worse, an outcast from the society of its kind and destined to
extermination the minute it seeks the presence of other tigers. All
these things count in the menagerie of the circus of to-day; things are
a bit different from the olden times, when an animal was only an animal.
In fact, within the last twenty years, there has been a complete
turnover in the animal business. Methods of training have changed
from ones of undoubted cruelty to those in which the beasts work for
a reward, just as a man or woman works for a living. Greatest of all,
there has been a change to a system where the beauty or grace of a
beast is placed secondary to the condition of its mentality. No longer
is an animal selected simply because it is a “good looker.” There is
something far more important,--the brain.
Not long ago, I roamed into the menagerie of a Mid-Western circus
to find Bob McPherson, the cat trainer, sitting in front of a den
containing four Sumatran tigers. Apparently he was merely resting
there, a newspaper in his hands, reading awhile, then watching the
tigers. The next day it was the same and the next after that. Then I
asked questions.
“New cats,” answered the trainer in his jerky fashion. “Just in from
Hamburg. Got to break two of ’em on the road--short in the big act. So
I thought I’d put ’em through their sprouts first and pick ’em out so
I wouldn’t get any more scars on me. Got four hundred and eighty-eight
now. That’s enough. Don’t want any more. Breaking cats on the road’s
dangerous work, unless you’re pretty sure of ’em. Just about got ’em
picked out. Guess it’ll be that littlest male and the big female. Those
other two--don’t like ’em. One of ’em batty and the other one’s a
dunce.”
For Bob McPherson had been doing something more than merely sitting
there in front of the tiger den and idly watching a set of cats when he
wasn’t busy with his newspaper. He had been applying a set of mental
tests to his prospective students, crude perhaps in comparison, yet
fully as efficient for his purpose as the Binet test by which the human
mind is catalogued.
One tiger had been eliminated from the beginning and in a glance. He
was cross-eyed, which to the ordinary person would mean nothing.
But the trainer who takes a cross-eyed tiger into the arena with him
also takes the chance of being carried out a huddled, bleeding mass, in
a piece of canvas. Crossed eyes in a human mean little. Crossed eyes
in a tiger mean that somewhere in the past there has been misbreeding;
that a brother and sister or father and daughter have mated, bringing
into the world a thing that is warped in intelligence, lacking in
mental poise and balance, and with a predilection toward murder. And so
the cross-eyed Sumatran had been passed by without further examination.
As to the others their every action had been watched by the trainer;
the manner in which they fed, voracity with which they attacked their
food, their actions when the crowds came into the big tent, their
attitude toward the cage boy and toward his steel scraper when he came
to clean the dens.
“Prince!” called McPherson. The small male, apparently asleep, opened
its eyes, stared calmly for an instant, then closed them again.
“Janet!” The same thing happened with the big female.
“Rajah!” The crossed-eyed tiger raised his head and hissed, his long
yellow teeth disclosed from furling lips.
“Major!” There was no response. The fourth tiger did not recognize the
call; it merely lay there, eyes closed, dormant. The trainer shrugged
his shoulders.
“Lunkhead!” he exclaimed. “Doesn’t even know his own name. If he can’t
learn his name, how is he going to learn tricks?”
By which little experiment had a great deal been explained. Prince
and Janet had shown by their calm recognition that they not only
could understand the distinct name by which they had been designated,
but that also the voice of the man who called it brought no malice
or enmity. The actions of Rajah, the inbred, had been of a different
nature; the application of the name had caused snarling rebellion,
indicative of revolt should the animal ever be taken into the training
den. Major--well, Major was no more than McPherson had called him; a
lunkhead, without even enough brains to know when he was spoken to. And
this kind of an animal is even more dangerous than the one which is
plainly and openly rebellious against human control.
In fact, in the menagerie, he occupies the same position that the
“harmless imbecile” does in the human strata. For years he may amble
through life, allowing the world and all it contains to go past him.
Then suddenly, he goes mad.
An instance of this happened recently with John Helliott, a trainer for
one of the big shows. His exhibit was short of tigers, and merely to
“dress the act” he took into the arena with the rest of the big cats an
animal which had always been looked upon as a harmless, amiable dunce.
There was little training; Helliott did not want the Bengal to do more
than merely sit upon its pedestal, a thing comparatively easy, for the
beast apparently was too lazy to desire to do anything else.
So week after week it went on; the cat came forth from the chute,
stretched itself, then went to its seat, there to sit vacuously until
the act was over. Then one day, something happened.
It was nothing new. Nothing but what had happened twice every day
during the whole of the tiger’s term as an actor, a clown “walk
around,” in which one of the circus funsters made the circuit of the
hippodrome track in the guise of a radio fan, with a contraption upon
his head designed to represent a broadcasting apparatus, from which
there spluttered sparks and the constant crackle of electricity. It
had been going on ever since the season had started. But the tiger
simply hadn’t noticed it, that was all. On this occasion its vacant
eyes happened to be turned in that direction. It saw the sparks; it
heard the queer crackling noise, it went crazy with fear. When a
frenzied tent was finally stilled again, they carried John Helliott
forth to four weeks in a hospital, the victim of a “harmless imbecile.”
That there are imbeciles among animals, that there are the criminally
insane, the criminally jealous; morons, warped intellects, criminal
effects of laziness; the murder instinct as apart from a natural
instinct of self-preservation, and a deliberate desire among some
beasts to revolt against the laws of right and wrong are all things
which have become foregone conclusions among the animal trainers
of to-day. Nor are they the result of mere theories, but rather of
experiments in animal psychology to learn which certain beasts do
certain things, and the cause for rebellion or obedience.
To tell the truth, animal training has become greatly like human
training, especially as regards right and wrong. In fact, this is the
first thing that is taught the caged beasts, that it is wrong, for
instance, to attempt to steal a cage-mate’s food; that it is wrong
to fight the feeding forks by which meat is placed within the den,
or attempt to tear at the cage scrapers with which their homes are
cleaned. That paws should remain within the cage and not outside; in
fact, that anything which happens beyond the bars should be disregarded
entirely. The circus must remember always that it caters to spectators,
and that some of these spectators apparently leave their brains at home
when they go to a circus lot. They know that a tiger or a lion or a
leopard is a dangerous beast; they know that their claws are poisonous
and sufficiently strong to tear the muscles loose from a person’s arm.
But nevertheless, if a big cat happens to be quiescent in its cage,
there’ll come the inevitable:
“Oh, isn’t it pretty? I’m going to see if I can’t pet it!”
Whereupon there is a sally under the guard ropes--providing the
menagerie attendant isn’t looking--and an attempt to pet an animal
which fears every human except his trainer. Then, when the beast
inadvertently claws at an arm or a hand, the visitor becomes angry and
blames the circus. Therefore, there is only one recourse, to make it a
part of animal morals and ethics to keep their paws within their cages
and not offer temptations to misguided humans.
What is more, the animals of a menagerie seem to recognize these rules
and understand them. The house-cat instinct to play runs through every
jungle feline. A fluttering piece of canvas outside the den will offer
a constant temptation to paw and tear at it; yet I have seen a leopard
disregard a thing like this for hours, seemingly paying no attention
to it, until the meal call comes from the cookhouse and the menagerie
is deserted of attendants. Whereupon it will sneak forward, play with
the canvas until it notes a returning animal man, when it will halt and
once more drop back into its usual position, as though that tantalizing
bit of canvas were nothing whatever in its life.
Nor does all this merely happen. It comes about, according to the
present-day animal men, through a thoroughly developed morality or
lack of it. The animal trainer is these days a person of constant
experiments, of irrepressible inquiry. It is he who must go into
the dens with jungle beasts, or command the elephants in the rings.
If things go wrong, he is the one who is taken to the hospital as a
result of it, and so he wants to know the why of every animal’s action.
During these experiments, some surprising things have taken place, and
some revelations concerning the workings of animal minds and animal
criminality.
Several years ago, three young tigers, a male and two females, all from
different mothers, were placed together in a cage of the John Robinson
Circus as a “baby animal” feature. They played together, ate together,
seemed happy together.
They grew. The male and one female developed to maturity with a
rapidity which was overlooked by the menagerie men. The second
female remained a cub. Nevertheless the old case of the triangle had
developed; one morning the side boards of the den were taken down and
surprised animal men stared within. The smallest tiger was dead; torn
and slashed by tooth and claw. The other tigers were nuzzling each
other; purring and growling in the good humor of matedom. For them the
world was quite rosy; the other angle of the triangle was gone. What is
more, the murder of the tigress had been accomplished by both of them;
their claws were equally discolored; their jowls both reddened where
teeth had torn at the throat and spine of an interloper.
[Illustration: YOUNG LIONS IN THE TRAINING DEN.]
[Illustration: WAITING FOR MEALTIME.]
This does not happen solely with what might be called the lower
forms of jungle animals. Quite otherwise, it is more apparent in the
primates. In the Stuhr Menagerie at Portland, for instance, were three
orang-outangs, a male and two females. For a time everything was
lovely; then the male chose a mate from the pair with which he was
quartered, and the ancient story of one woman too many began again.
The fortunate Mrs. Orang-outang seemed to make no objection to the
company of her lady friend. But the male did. Morning, night and noon
he beat her, bit her, spat and snarled at her, stole her food from her
and in general abused her in a manner wholly unbecoming a gentleman.
To which she offered no objection, for the simple reason that she
was in love with him.
So much, in fact, that when the menagerie men decided upon separation
as a surcease to her sorrows, she threw herself against the bars,
squealed and cried and lamented; and finally decided upon starvation
as a means of suicide rather than to be separated from the rest of the
family. The animal men decided to put her back again. But as rapidly
they decided otherwise. This time there was no forbearance. Both set
upon her, the male taking the initiative, and it was only by main force
that she was rescued, torn and bleeding, to be sold immediately in an
effort to save her from herself.
Nor is it always elemental, this strain of law-breaking in the
menagerie. Nor is every overt act classed as criminal. Recently with
one of the big shows, it was noticed that a riding tiger, each day
when it finished its ride around the arena upon the back of a horse,
and leaped to the ground, struck out farther and farther toward the
trainer. At last came the time when the beast reached the ground almost
at the feet of the animal man, suddenly to straighten, to hiss, then
to strike savagely at him with both forefeet. The blows were avoided,
the animal sent back to its pedestal, and after the performance there
were conferences. Several of them. Either that tiger had worked out a
carefully conceived plot, deliberately carried forward day by day, or
some more natural cause was responsible for the attack.
The idea of a plot didn’t seem reasonable; animals do strange things,
it is true; but rarely are their actions more than the result of a
natural cunning, which leads them to simulate docility in order to gain
their ends. The belief that this tiger could have worked out a theory
by which it could approach an inch or so nearer each day was a bit too
heavy even for menagerie men; so they looked for something else and
found it. The cause of that attack had been a rapidly growing affection
of the eyes which had caused the tiger progressively to misgauge his
distance when leaping. Then, at last, the surprise of finding his
trainer right upon him had caused the attack. They sent for the circus
veterinary, treated the tiger’s eyes, forgave him his trespasses, and
now, with his vision clear again, he’s back in the steel arena once
more.
Every now and then, in truth, there’s a Freudian aspect about the
handling of menagerie beasts, complicated until the cause becomes
known, and afterward extremely simple. As was the case of Jake, a
full-bred Nubian lion, trained to the “Wallace” or untamable lion
trick, and one of the most faithful beasts of his kind in captivity.
Jake’s task in life was to nearly kill his trainer twice daily, in what
is known as the “Wallace stunt.” An act, by the way, which demands
exactness on the part of the trainer and of the beast, a perfect
understanding between the two, and a high order of intelligence on the
part of the animal, for the simple reason that his job is to fool the
audience.
The lion is let into the arena, roaring and bellowing the minute he
leaves his cage. He chews at his pedestal. He turns and claws and
thunders at the attendants outside. To all intents and purposes, he is
a raging, vengeful thing that really doesn’t begin to get along with
himself until he’s killed a trainer or two a day. He seeks to climb
the bars of the big den; he claws at the netting; from outside the
trainer throws him a crumpled piece of cloth and he tears it to shreds
even before it has had time to strike the arena floor. Meanwhile the
audience shivers and shakes, hoping the trainer won’t try to go in
there, and then hoping that he will, inasmuch as they’ve never really
seen a trainer killed. Then the trainer opens the door and leaps
within. The battle is on!
Revolvers flash, whips crack. But the lion will not be tamed. Gradually
he forces the trainer backwards, closer, closer; now he has him in a
corner and crouches to leap; now the trainer edges forth into a new
chance for life, only to be re-cornered by the bloodthirsty beast;
to be almost chewed to pieces, and finally, in a desperate rush, he
escapes through the steel door just as the lion comes crashing against
it!
Thrilling! But only an act, after all. For every movement of that
battle is a rehearsed thing, with the lion and the trainer each knowing
every instant what the other is going to do. And the lion which
displays his fierceness in this manner is usually the calmest beast of
the whole menagerie. So it was with Jake. Until one day they changed
his habitat from a full cage to one slightly smaller than a half
compartment. And that day Jake became a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!
In the arena, he was the same old Jake, dependable, exact to the
quarter of an inch. But once the act was over and he was returned to
his new home, he became in reality the beast he had simulated in the
steel arena.
Apparently there was no cause for it. Nevertheless the consequence
was there. Instead of his usual amiability, he had taken on a sullen,
vengeful fierceness. His trainer could not come near him. He fought the
feeding forks. He refused food.
They tried experiments upon him to test his mentality and to seek
to determine the extent of his murder lust. A live cat was placed
scrambling in the den. He paid no attention to it. A fluttering
chicken was thrown within. He disregarded that also. His hate was for
humans and humans alone, the humans who had placed him in that small
enclosure; and his hatred vanished as soon as he was released into the
steel arena. About that time they began to inquire into Jake’s past.
That inquiry brought forth the fact that Jake had been shipped to
America five years before; that he had come in a crate too small for
him, and that he had been horribly mistreated by one of the attendants
who accompanied him to this country from the shipping headquarters in
Europe. Perhaps Jake didn’t remember the specific instance. But the
closeness of small quarters had brought back to him an instinctive
hatred, and Jake was a murderer as long as that instinct worked on him.
The result was that Jake was returned to his old domicile, a full cage,
and he once more became placid. Even I, no trainer of lions, or even
of dogs, could go into the cage with him and not think any more of it
than a visit with a house cat. But in that small cage, well that was
something else again!
So it goes. Mentality’s a queer thing, even in beasts. The amount of
insanity which has been discovered in recent years has been surprising,
even to men who had argued its presence. Nor is there much deviation
between the human and animal cause.
A great part of it comes from inbreeding and poor parentage, just as it
does with humans. Some comes from illness, especially that affecting
the spine and nerves. And still another cause is idleness.
Evidently Adam wasn’t the only being that was told to get out and
earn his daily food. Animals must have received their orders also,
for the happiness and health and mental comfort of every one of them
depends upon work. Lions and tigers and leopards are made to pace in
expectancy for their meals; the great hunks of meat are purposely
delayed. The elephant is happiest when he is worked hard, and plenty of
strain placed upon his muscles. The tamest beasts of any circus are the
“working bulls,” allowed to wander at will about the circus grounds,
with their trainer lolling in the shadow of a wagon and commanding
his charge merely by a word or a grunt. And nowadays the first thing
that is prescribed for a convalescent beast on at least one circus is
exercise!
It came about in a rather queer way. A three-year-old lioness became
ill with an intestinal disease. Weakened, it was believed that absolute
rest was the best thing for her. She was taken out of the act of which
she formed a part, confined in a half compartment, and presumably well
cared for. Months went by. Then it was discovered that the cat had
become insane.
[Illustration: AN INBRED LION, HENCE NOT A GOOD WORKER.]
[Illustration: CIRCUS MEN CAN’T BEAT THESE THINGS, SO THEY “JINE ’EM”.]
Her breeding, slightly inbred, was a part of the cause, it was true.
But another was enforced idleness. The symptoms took the form of a
constant scratching against the floor of the cage, not noticed until
the animal had worn the pads of her paws bare, and, in a sudden excess
of agony, had rolled to her back, as if, by holding the bleeding
paws aloft, to cool and soothe them. The menagerie superintendent
went close to the cage and for a long time studied the beast, her
nervous twitchings, the spasmodic reversion to that frenzied digging
and scratching, then the return to the position on her back, the
pain-ridden paws stretched above her.
“Only one thing to do,” came the conclusion, and the menagerie
superintendent hurried for the harness-maker’s tent.
There he fashioned a set of four shoes, built much after the fashion
that shoes for dogs are made. Following which he obtained assistance,
bound the beast, carefully bandaged the ragged paws, affixed the shoes
and released the big cat.
There was a moment or so of ludicrous skating about, an exaggerated
edition of a house cat in paper shoes, then the lioness attacked
the trappings with her teeth, tore them off, and resumed her former
activities. The menagerie superintendent only sighed and went back to
the harness shop.
This time, when he did his cobbling, he inserted sharp tacks,
protruding from the inside. Patiently he put the new set of footgear
on the lioness and awaited results. Once more she strove to tear them
off, but the tacks hurt her mouth. She desisted, and tried again,
for the third and fourth and fifth time. During which periods, the
insane desire to scratch overcame her. For moments at a time she would
forget that the raw-fleshed paws were padded, only to return to her
gnawing, and to desist. At last, she ceased to fight the pads, and the
superintendent gave a sigh of relief.
“Now let her scratch to her heart’s content,” he announced. “The more
the merrier.”
In the next three weeks the lioness wore out six pairs of shoes. In
the meantime she began to round out; her eyes became clearer, and the
frenzies of scratching less pronounced. In a month the paws had healed
and a seventh pair of shoes was placed on her feet, to last far longer
than the others. Gradually the big cat became saner, more natural. At
last the scratching ceased entirely; the shoes were removed, and the
menagerie superintendent gave a verdict of returned sanity. Exercise,
which might otherwise have killed the beast, through infection of those
torn paws, had effected a cure, through a set of leather shoes. And
to-day that lioness is back in her act, clear and strong again. After
all, there’s more to the care of menagerie animals than merely feeding
them!
CHAPTER VII
THE ELLYPHANTS ARE COMING-G-G!
One drizzly, murky day last spring, a heavily loaded freighter pushed
a course through the fog toward New York, then brought up clumsily at
quarantine. A tug approached in cocky haste. A man climbed aboard,
searched through the few passengers, found the person he sought and
asked a hurried question.
“How many bulls did you bring over?”
The other, a representative of the Hagenbeck interests of Germany,
wholesale dealers in jungle animals, grinned.
“Seven. But--”
“I’ll take ’em all!”
“But--you can’t. They’re not for sale.”
“Not for--?”
“Nope,” the animal man grinned again, “they’re all sold. The Ringling
bunch heard somewhere that I had ’em aboard and they bought ’em by
radio, a thousand miles out at sea!”
Following which there were swear words, expressed in circus fashion.
Elephants, or “bulls,” as they are known, are becoming scarce. They’re
as protected in India--and India, not Africa, is the supply point of
the circus elephant--as deer in America. They’re hard to get, and yet
they must be gotten, for the simple reason that they are the backbone,
the sinew, the bones and what-not of the circus. The menagerie is
only a vacant tent without the pachydermic stake line and its peanut
mendicants; the circus parade is only so much hollow mockery without
that inevitable cry of:
“Hold yo’ hosses, everaybodie-e-e-e-e! The ellyphants are coming!”
With the result that the notice of a shipment of elephants is a signal
for scurrying about in the outdoor show world, of hasty summoning
of finances, of notes at the bank if necessary. Circuses are in the
business of knowing what the public--the mass public, gauged upon a
standard of millions of persons a year--really wants in them. And what
that public desires above everything else is elephants! This in spite
of the fact that this same public knows less about the big animals than
almost any other beasts in the menagerie, notwithstanding that element
of personal association via the bag of peanuts and the daily visiting
in front of the picket line before the announcers begin their bawling
warnings that the “beeg show, the be-e-g show,” is about to begin!
Nor is the public alone in its affection. Back of the public is the
circus man himself, with a love for those same elephants exceeded only
by his love for the “opery,” an affection, incidentally, expressed in
the reverse; you’ll never hear a circus man announce his affection for
“the trick” while the season is in progress. On the contrary he swears
at it, at the hardships, the weather, the long jumps, the longer hours,
and everything else connected with the life of his canvas world. In the
same fashion he swears at the elephants, for their prankishness, for
their prowling proclivities, for their temperamental natures, their
appetites, their inclination to rampage at the slightest provocation,
and for the very fact that they’re elephants. But nevertheless he’ll
fight for them almost as soon as he’ll fight for the circus itself,
because he loves them, and because he knows them. The reason? Simply
because they’re circus folks themselves in a different sort of package,
even to the extent of conversation!
A few years ago, a scientist discovered that monkeys could talk, and
thereby believed he had discovered something new about animals. It
created a great deal of interest, except in the circus. For why should
a showman worry about a little thing like a monkey, when he can not
only listen to pachyderm’s conversation, but understand it! The veriest
“punk” about a circus menagerie can tell you without even a glance at
the picket line, what is going on among the elephants, from ordinary
contentment to the preludes of a breakaway!
Incidentally, it is simple to learn that language. When an elephant
desires to make an imperative demand, it does so by a sharp blast which
is used for that purpose, and that alone. When it begs or coaxes, the
trumpet call is soft and pleading, almost a whine. When one elephant
is frightened and another isn’t, the calm member soothes the companion
by a soft announcement which carries a low and expressive note. To say
nothing of the love lullaby--and, an elephant in love is as thorough
about the matter as a sixteen-year-old boy--the fear signal, the danger
signal, the warning chirrup which inevitably gives the announcement of
an impending stampede; the wailing cry of pain or distress by which
a “bull” tells when he is ill, and lastly, the sound of gratitude or
contentment. When a pachyderm thumps on the ground with his trunk to
attract your attention, then places the end of his trunk in his ear,
using that ear as a sort of diaphragm, and blows with the softness of a
reed instrument in the hands of a practiced musician, you can mark it
down for certain that there’s one elephant in the world that is pleased
almost beyond speech!
So, perhaps it’s because they understand the elephantine language that
circus men like elephants. Perhaps it isn’t. For the one real reason
is the fact that the bulls can be the most foolish, yet at the same
time, remain fundamentally the most sagacious beasts of the whole
animal kingdom! This goes for everything, from government on down. In
elephantdom, there are even elections, to say nothing of a rare case
now and then of a complete change of administration.
The elephant is a strong believer in government, of the feminine
sort. There aren’t any male party leaders. It’s the female every time
which forms the head of an elephant herd and which handles the reins
of administration. But one queen can be better than another, and the
subjects are quick to recognize the fact!
In 1903, a Western circus, which at that time possessed an elephant
herd of six members, ruled by a comparatively young and inexperienced
queen, decided that it needed more pachyderms. It therefore sent to
Germany for two additions to the herd, with the result that a month or
so later there arrived in America a determined feminine named Old Mom,
accompanied by her equally feminine sidekick, Frieda.
Mom and Frieda had been boss and assistant boss of a herd in Germany.
A wise old bull was Mom. Sixty years of age, slightly puffy under the
eyes--elephants have a strange way of showing their years, in much the
same manner as a human--with a few teeth missing, but with a bump of
sagacity and determination which had made her outstanding even among
a group of thirty elephants in Germany, old Mom was a sort of Queen
Victoria among pachyderms. A strong friendship between the owners
of the animal farm in Germany and the owner of the circus had been
responsible for her shipment, friendship which the circus owner looked
upon as a bit left-handed as he read the letter which announced her
coming.
“Fine bunch Hagenbeck’s handed me!” came dolefully. “He’s sent over
a bull that’s used to running things in the herd. I’ve already got a
leader. What’ll happen when they get together? Fight their heads off, I
guess.”
Nor were the bull-men quite sure themselves what the outcome would be;
it was about the same proposition as a general manager being hired for
a factory where the only executive position was already filled. With
some misgivings, they led Mom and her friend Frieda into the menagerie
tent and put them with the herd. Nothing happened. A few days went
by, in which Bumps, the regular leader, continued at her job as the
mainspring of the herd, Mom and her chum, Frieda, merely tagging along
and doing what the rest did. Then something happened!
There wasn’t a revolution; in fact, it just seemed to happen. In the
herd was a young elephant which was being trained and which didn’t like
the procedure. On the third day after Mom’s arrival, the bull-keeper
placed his hook gently behind the student’s ear to lead him forth to
his lessons. The elephant protested, squealing as though in pain, as
though the keeper were using cruelty and really plunging the hook deep
in his flesh. Old Mom watched the proceeding with interest.
More, when that scholar came back to his place in line, still squealing
the distress signal, Old Mom walked over to him, eyed him carefully,
reached forth her trunk and very tenderly examined the skin behind the
ear, as though searching for some evidence of a wound. She didn’t find
it; the elephant had lied about that bull-hook. Immediately Old Mom
gave her verdict, by tightly coiling her trunk, then sending it forth
with the force of a pile driver, striking the malingerer squarely in
the forehead and flooring him. After which she calmly walked back to
her stake.
Immediately the picket line became a thing of low-voiced chirrups, of
excited trumpeting and of general chatter, so complicated that even the
animal men didn’t know what it was all about. But they found out the
next morning.
It was dawn, and a long haul from the circus train to the lot. The
twenty-four-hour man, standing in the middle of the road, flagged down
the cookhouse wagon and shouted a message:
“Let the bulls go first. Two or three bridges that don’t look any too
safe. Better wait ’till the elephants have tested ’em.”
Whereupon the announcement traveled on down the line to the elephant
superintendent, and a moment later he passed on the run, his gigantic
charges trundling after. They reached the first bridge.
“Bumps!” he shouted. But Bumps hung back. Instead, in her place,
as calmly as though she had occupied the position all her life,
Old Mom walked forward, followed by Frieda, placed one foot on the
bridge, hefted her weight to it, pronounced it safe, and crossed, her
handmaiden close beside her, and Bumps taking third place in line.
It had been accomplished overnight. The herd had found the kind of a
leader it wanted--and elected her. Old Mom has been in command ever
since!
Nor was ever a political boss more autocratic. Like many another leader
of elephant herds, Old Mom has her system, which runs from rewards
to punishments, from “beating up” the male members or agitators to
soothing the feelings of some squealing “punk,” fresh from its fright
of the first lesson in elephant training. Never does Old Mom neglect
to check up on the effects of the first few days at school. With
the sensitive “finger” of her trunk working with the exactness of a
measuring tape, she covers, inch by inch, the spots where the ropes
have been tied to trip the animal in the process of teaching it to lay
down, examines the spots behind the ears and along the trunk where the
elephant men are wont to catch the beast with their elephant hooks,
looking everywhere for evidences of rope burns or cruelty. If she finds
them, there is bellowing and hatred for an inefficient animal trainer,
often leading to investigation by the animal superintendent and the
discharge of the offending trainer. If she doesn’t, which is usually
the case, she merely cajoles the beast with slow-sounding, reed-like
noises, gradually calming it. And if the animal persists in its foolish
fears, she whacks it across the face with her trunk and walks away in
disgust. The queer thing is that she is able to discern between real
and bogus fright; she seems to know that her charges are naturally lazy
and that they’ll get out of work if they can! More than once Old Mom
has been known to halt in her labors on the show-lot that she might
eye carefully the elephant which is working with her, or pretending to
work. The best little trick that an elephant knows is to place its head
within about an eighth of an inch of a wagon and pretend to push, while
really not exerting an atom of effort. It often fools the bull-men.
But it doesn’t fool Old Mom. One whirling blow of that trunk and Mom
herself does the resting.
But her trunk isn’t Mom’s only weapon. There are nineteen bulls in her
herd now, and some of them are bigger than she. A battle of trunks
might result in a disheveled queen. So Mom has other and more judicious
methods. One of these is to seize the ear of an offender with a quick
thrust of her trunk, cramp it hard, then twist. It never has failed yet
to produce a bellowing, howling subject, suddenly brought to his knees
and begging for mercy. Another gentle trick is to whirl suddenly, lower
her head and with all her strength, butt a criminal in the midriff.
Three years ago, a full-grown male elephant was purchased from another
show where the rules of the herd leader evidently had been a trifle
lax. For four or five days the new member gave evidences of resenting
the stern rule of Old Mom. Then suddenly everything changed. He was the
meekest member of the whole herd. All his bluster and rebellion had
vanished. Also three inches of his tail. Old Mom had made one swirling
dive, caught his caudal appendage between her teeth and clamped hard,
while fourteen thousand pounds of elephant flesh trumpeted and bellowed
and squealed, and while the whole menagerie force struggled to break
the hold. When it all was over, an operation was necessary to remove
the crushed cartilage and bone. One of Old Mom’s very best boys now is
a bob-tailed elephant!
As for punishment for herself, she recognizes but one superior, the
superintendent of the herd. To him and him alone she acknowledges the
right of punishment; even makes ready for it. In 1914, one of the
stars of the shows was William Frederick Cody (Buffalo Bill), and in
his employ was a former officer of the Russian Army who, through the
nonchalance of the circus, had become simply Rattlesnake Bill.
Rattlesnake Bill teased Old Mom, and the elephant hated him so much
that it became almost an obsession with her to “get” him. This she
attempted at every opportunity, chasing him when she saw the chance,
striving to sneak up on him--she could release any chain tie ever made
by human hands--and once almost catching him, and, failing, taking
out her vengeance on Colonel Cody’s spider trap which Rattlesnake
Bill drove, wrecking it. Then suddenly she halted at the sight of the
superintendent.
A bull-hook lay on the ground. She reached for it, raised it and
extended it to her keeper, offering it to him that he might punish her.
But before he could raise his arm, she had begun to “talk,” chirruping
in his ear, curling her trunk around his neck, cooing at him with that
peculiar blandishing tone which, in its very softness, seems impossible
for an elephant; then finally, whimpering, she went to her knees. If
ever an elephant talked herself out of a well-deserved whack across
the trunk, it was Old Mom, with the result that she returned to her
place at the stake line victorious, while an order went forth that
Rattlesnake Bill, in the future, must leave the elephants alone!
In fact, it is such evidences of reasoning power and of quick thinking
that make the elephant such a beloved thing to the circus man.
“Want to see the slickest thing in the world?” a bull-tender asked me
last spring, as I wandered into the menagerie tent of a big circus.
“Lookit here!”
He moved proudly to the stake line and opened the lips of a female
elephant. There, crammed tightly against a ragged, broken tusk, was a
close-packed piece of rag, so held that it prevented the jagged ivory
from cutting the tender membrane of the mouth.
“Thought that up herself!” the bull-tender went on. “You know,
Lady--that’s her name--she’s got bum tushes. They keep bustin’ off, and
I ain’t found any way to harden ’em. Sawed ’em off an’ everything, but
they just keep bustin’ and gettin’ ragged. They cut her cheek. Couple
of months ago, I see her pick up a rag and jam it in her mouth, and
then she sticks her trunk in her ear and squeals like she was Columbus
discoverin’ America. Ever since then, I’ve had to have a rag for her.
She does the packin’ herself!”
Nor did the elephant man tell the whole story! When feeding time came,
and there was danger of swallowing the rag, the elephant carefully
extracted it, laid it aside, proceeded with her meal and, that
finished, reached again for her dental packing and placed it in its
position of protection!
This has its counterpart in the actions of the herd of another circus,
which suddenly appeared on the streets of a Canadian town, each waving
a gunny sack in very stolid and dignified fashion, as it marched
along in parade. The crowds in the street didn’t know what it was all
about, nor did a good part of the show, for that matter. Behind it was
a theft, a fight, the hint of an elephant insurrection, and a great
invention. Archimedes accomplished no more when he discovered the
principle of the screw!
It was fly time--and hard ground. There was little dust for the bulls
to curl into their trunks and throw on their backs, thus ridding
themselves of the pests. The herd was becoming fidgety when Old Mom,
the leader, noticed something before her, eyed it in thoughtful mien,
then reached forth her trunk to seize it. A gunny sack.
She waved it on the right side, and the flies departed. She tried the
other side, then straight over her head. Her back was free! Old Mom
shimmied with delight, then draping the gunny sack over one ear, she
poked her trunk into the other, to announce a squeal of discovery and
of happiness. But while she was doing this, the next elephant in line
stole the sack!
Immediately there was trouble. The flies had returned, and Old Mom
wanted her sack. But the thief pretended not to notice. Whereupon Old
Mom whanged him on the proboscis.
He dropped the sack. But before Old Mom could retrieve it, the third
elephant borrowed the fly duster, and when excited animal punks
returned with the elephant superintendent, four fights were in
progress, while the sack was traveling here and there about the stake
line like a football. There was a quick command, then peace. Every
elephant was equipped with his own personal fly-swatter, and what is
more, they were retained, each being carefully carried to the cars at
night when the great, shadowy herd thumped through the semidarkness for
its journey to the next town.
Impossible? That an elephant should think of such things? Talk for a
while with a circus man who really knows elephants and you’ll find it
is only the beginning!
A number of years ago, one of the big shows was making the run from
Everett, Washington, to Vancouver, British Columbia, when a wheel broke
on the elephant car, sending the big conveyance from the tracks and
partly capsizing it at a point just above the waters of the Pacific
Ocean. Six of the elephants broke their chains and liberated themselves
through the smashed roof of the car, but the seventh was imprisoned,
secured by an unusually heavy chain and further hampered by a timber
which had penetrated a leg.
The car was barely balanced and threatening with every plunge of the
frightened beast within to slide into the waters of the sound. When
human aid reached the overturned car, an animal wrecking crew was
already at its labors!
Five of the escaped beasts, with much trumpeting and tugging, were
pulling away the timbers from the top of the disabled car, and seeking
to reach the timbers which held the imprisoned elephant a captive,
while the sixth bull was banked half beneath the car and half against
it, using a great rock for a toe-hold, to keep the conveyance from
going into the waters of the Pacific Ocean! When the disabled animal
finally was chopped loose and liberated, the great splinter of
wood removed and the wound dressed, solicitous members of the herd
surrounded him, examined his wounds with their trunks, “talked” and
trumpeted.
Then, in true elephantine fashion, it struck the whole herd that there
had been a catastrophe and that they should be terribly frightened, in
spite of the fact that more than an hour had elapsed since the wreck.
Wide went their ears, high their trunks. Their eyes rolled, and there
sounded the chirrup of a panic. Then away they went, for a half-mile
or so up the tracks, finally to be corralled and held quiet on a wide
stretch of beach until a new car could be sent for them. It seems
elephant nature to become far more excited about a thing after it is
over than while it is in progress. The reasoning process functions
until there’s no more need for it. For which, at least one show is
grateful.
The circus strikes for the South in the autumn, following as long as
it can the lanes of warm weather, and trailing along in the wake of
the cotton-picking season, gathering up the dollars which have been
distributed as a result of the harvesting of the crop. So it happened
that in late October, six years ago, a big show was “dipping through
Texas,” showing for that day near a fair ground where a cotton pageant
was in progress and where one of the attractions was an airplane flight
over the grounds, accompanied by a rather straggling exhibition of
fireworks.
It was six o’clock and already dark. On the circus grounds, the
chandelier man passed on his rounds and put the spluttering lights
in places. The menagerie was deserted of humans; every one, from the
superintendent down, was on the lot, mingling with the few townspeople
and staring up at the aerial fireworks. But suddenly a man whirled. His
arms waved. A shout came barking forth:
“Into the menagerie, everybody! Something wrong!”
[Illustration: AN ELEPHANT IS THE EASIEST TO TRAIN AND THE HARDEST TO
HANDLE OF ANY MENAGERIE BEAST.]
[Illustration: A WORK ELEPHANT WAITING FOR THE CROWDS TO LEAVE THE
CIRCUS GROUNDS, WHEN HIS LABORS WILL BEGIN.]
From within the tent had come the high-toned, almost shrieking blast
of an elephant, the distress signal, as plain a warning of danger as
though it had been shouted by a human. Men raced through the entrance
and ducked under the side walling--just in time! One of the chandeliers
had flooded, the burning gasoline running down upon the tinder-dry
grass; already the blaze had spread to piles of canvas, bales of straw
about the animal cages, and the elephant hay supply. Another minute and
the menagerie would have been a seething mass of flame, but owing to
the elephant’s warning, there now was a chance.
There was no time to carry water. In the center of the tent was the
inevitable “juice joint,” ready for the trade of the night and supplied
with four barrels of lemonade. A swift command and men seized gunny
sacks, soaked them in the lemonade barrels and rushed to the fighting
of the fire, while bawling messengers summoned the rest of the circus
crew and brought the water wagon, followed by crews equipped with
picks and shovels and spades, that dirt might be used to extinguish
the gasoline flames. Through it all, the elephants remained passive.
But once the danger was past, the leader of the herd suddenly came to
herself, let out a chirrup and led the herd through the side walling!
Which hardly brought even a growl from the menagerie crew. They were
too grateful for that warning which had saved the show.
In fact there are many instances where the elephants have done much to
allow a circus to make good on its promises.
A show which I happened to be visiting was running from Regina,
Saskatchewan, in the prairie country, to Saskatoon, when a brake beam
dropped, and four flat cars went careening forth upon a railless
journey into the free and open country, though not overturning.
The train was stalled, with a great part of its parade and menagerie
equipment off the rails, and with the nearest division point twenty
miles away. Out at the telegraph wires, the conductor “connected
up,” that he might send an announcement of the wreck to the division
superintendent, together with the request for a wrecking crew to put
the show train back on the rails again. Which wasn’t even noticed by
the circus itself. Instead, the train boss called for the keeper of the
elephants.
“Never get on the lot to-day if we wait for that wrecker,” he
announced. “How about puttin’ them bulls on the job?”
With the result that “them bulls” were put. An hour later, that portion
of the train which had remained on the rails had been pulled out of the
way, two cars at a time, ties had been placed for a skidway, the four
flat cars had been restored to the tracks, and the circus was rushing
onward to keep faith with its promises, arriving at its show stand
before the wrecking crew and the “big hook” had even been able to leave
the division point!
Incidentally, there is one thing about an elephant regarding
which there is no uncertainty. He puts everything he possesses
into everything he does, except work. And the greatest of this
wholeheartedness comes in his likes and dislikes.
There is woe upon a big circus when two elephants, for instance, decide
that they want to be chums. When that decision happens, neither fire,
flood, pestilence nor disaster can keep them apart. They will accompany
each other when there is work to be done, or there won’t be any
work. They will break locks, pull up stakes, untie chain hitches and
half-hitches, wreck elephant cars, anything to be near the particular
elephant which they have selected as a comrade. Nor is this a mating
instinct. It happens more often between female and female and between
male and male than otherwise. But when it comes along, there’s no doubt
as to whether an elephant has a will of its own!
In a circus which plays the Pacific coast, Gladys and May decided
that they just must be chums. Being separated by the whole length of
the bull line simply broke their girlish hearts. They had the urge as
strongly as those strange pairs you’ve sometimes seen in human life,
wearing the same cut and pattern of clothing, the same kind of hat,
the same sort of shoes, and walking eternally with their arms about
each other. The bull-men decided, just to be obstinate, that Gladys and
May could get along very well as they were, and when they discovered
that Gladys one day had untied her chain and wobbled over to her girl
friend, they promptly took her back, wrapped her chain around the stake
again and then secured it with a clevis pin, which worked with a bolt
and nut attachment. Then they left her, to go about their labors of the
day.
Gladys remained at her stake until the menagerie crew went to the
evening meal in the cookhouse. When the menagerie superintendent
returned, however, it was to find Gladys down at the end of the stake
line again, talking over things with her friend, May. What was more,
that clevis pin was missing!
They searched everywhere, but they could not find it. Evidently, by
diligent work with the strong, but sensitive “finger” of her trunk,
Gladys had unbolted the pin and then hidden it. But where? They
searched the straw. It wasn’t there. They went outside the tent. No
clevis pin. Three days later, it was discovered in the straw of the
bull car, Gladys had hidden it in the pouch of her under-lip, next to
the jaw, carried it there all during the evening and then taken it
with her to the bull car, where she had secreted it in a place which
she believed safe from the prying eyes of circus men. An elephant
doesn’t remain at its stake because it feels itself a prisoner. There
is hardly an elephant in America that is not a pachydermic Houdini.
Hitches, half-hitches, square knots, slip-nooses, single and double
ties, all are the same when one of the big mammals decides that it’s
tired of being attached to a stake. With the result that when an
elephant takes the notion that its life isn’t complete without the
company of another pachyderm, it generally wins out, or causes trouble.
On another show one year, this chummy instinct became rampant, the
worst of it all being the fact that the elephants had picked out as
their pals beasts which worked in opposite rings during the circus
performance. The result was that when the big animals were led into the
arena, a scramble inevitably resulted, with elephants squalling and
trumpeting and squealing in protest, then, becoming rebellious, chasing
half across the tent to get into the ring which their chums occupied,
until at last it was necessary to make a recasting of the whole herd so
that the “friends” might be together. But in the circus, even irritable
conditions sometimes become useful. Which brings up again the case of
Mom and her friend Frieda--and a toothache.
If there were such things as false teeth for elephants, Mom probably
would have had them. Nature fitted her with a poor dental display, and
around the menagerie in which she is the herd-head the attendants are
almost constantly dosing her for anything from sore gums to cavities.
There came a time when Mom produced a tooth which needed pulling.
It caused a conference. The superintendent knew that he couldn’t
rummage around in her mouth with a pair of forceps and yank out that
tooth with a block and tackle. Besides, there was no way to chain her
sufficiently for a slow, pulling process. In addition, animal men,
propagandists to the contrary, are as a rule soft-hearted.
So, the task with Mom was to get that tooth out as quickly as possible,
and with a minimum of pain. The elephant superintendent drove a stake
deep into the ground before Mom, sent her to her haunches, and then,
as tenderly as possible, fastened one end of a piece of baling wire to
the tooth and the other to the stake. Whereupon he walked away, picked
up his bull-hook, deliberately approached Frieda and whacked her on the
trunk.
Frieda squealed as though her life were in danger, and Mom jerked to
her feet, bellowed, stared in goggle-eyed fashion, then, suddenly
forgetful of the animal she had sought to succor, jammed her trunk into
her mouth, felt about carefully, and squealed happily. The tooth lay on
the ground, where it had been yanked by the baling wire as Mom jumped
to her feet! It was the old story over again, of the boy and a piece of
twine tied to the door knob. Human remedies work with elephants also,
even to the extent of paregoric when they get the colic.
And human prejudices, for that matter. You’ve seen, perhaps, the man
who will take a drink himself, but who abhors drunkenness? The same
thing has been found among elephants, and in at least one case, it has
ended in tragedy. Again it was Old Mom, and the place was a Pacific
coast metropolis.
Old Mom is a toper. She loves a drink better than anything else in
the world, except candy or peanuts. Whisky is excellent, beer better,
and she had been known--in other days--to drink five gallons of cheap
wine without losing her dignity. But she loathes intoxication; in
fact, only one of her keepers ever was able to approach her in an
intoxicated state, and he, simply to show that the rule was breakable,
inevitably slept off his drunkenness beneath her, while Old Mom would
weave all night in protective wakefulness. Perhaps a genuine affection
might be held responsible for this; the other case was one of simple
acquaintanceship.
A canvasman about the show had been in the habit of giving Mom a bit
of a nip now and then, and because she enjoyed it and watched for him,
believed that he had found the absolute way to her heart. On the day
of the tragedy, he arrived at the circus grounds drunk, and at once
hurried for the picket line.
“Here, Mom,” and he reached for a bottle in his hip pocket, “come on
an’ have drinksh with me!”
To his surprise, Old Mom didn’t curl her trunk in the usual fashion of
delight and wait for him to pour a half pint down her throat. Instead,
she lowered her head and gently, though forcibly, pushed him away. The
canvasman reeled to her again.
“Wash matter wi’ you, Mom!”
“Get away from that bull!” It was the warning of an elephant man.
“She’s sore! She’ll sap you in a minute!”
But the canvasman only laughed, announced that he knew Old Mom, and
persisted. Again she pushed him away and for a third time, growing more
and more fretful. A low bellow sounded. The canvasman did not heed the
warning. Instead, he grasped her trunk and strove to raise it that he
might pour the liquor into her mouth. Then it happened!
A quick thrust of the head, a lightning-like curling of the trunk, and
Old Mom has lashed forth, striking the man a terrific blow in the pit
of the stomach and knocking him half across the menagerie. Hurrying
bull-tenders reached him and assisted him to his feet. Then, groaning,
he reeled out of the tent, and rolling himself in a piece of canvas
outside the side wall, complained for a time of his injuries, then
went to sleep. But Old Mom was not satisfied.
The day was a breezy one, and the side wall was continually being
raised, giving the elephant intermittent sights of her tormentor. All
that afternoon she watched him, but gave no evidence of her anger.
Then when the time for the evening meal came and the menagerie was
deserted, she quietly untied her fastenings, moved ponderously forward,
straight through the side wall, jerked the unfortunate drunkard from
his wrappings of canvas, raised the dazed man high, then crashed him to
the ground, stamped upon him, and at last, with one great swirl of her
trunk, lashed her unfortunate victim into a pile of iron tent stakes.
After which she returned to her place in line, calm and apparently
satisfied!
Nor was there seemingly any remorse upon her part for her action, a
condition which saved her from punishment. According to her way of
figuring, she had been tormented beyond reason, and had no amends to
make. It is only when an elephant is sorry for what it has done and
realizes that it has committed an infraction of rules that any sort of
punishment is accepted. Then, a scolding by the boss of the elephant
herd and a few blows of a bull-hook, hardly even comparable to the
spanking of a child, are more efficacious than all the tortures in
the world. I once saw a big elephant start to lead a rampage in the
Coliseum in Chicago, only to be halted by the timely arrival of a
favorite keeper.
“Knees!” shouted the attendant, while a crowd of circus visitors
gathered to see the “punishment.” The elephant obeyed. The bull-keeper
shook his hook.
“Now ain’t you ashamed of yourself!” he began. “Ain’t you ashamed of
yourself! A great big lummix like you that ain’t got no more sense
than to start a breakaway in a building like this! I’m offen you for
life--yes, sir, offen you! Wouldn’t have nothin’ more to do with you
if it was the last breath of my life. A great big boob like you! See
this?” He shook the hook again. “I got a notion to whale the tar outen
you! Just what I’ve got! A great big simp that ain’t got any more
sense’n-- Well, what’ve you got to say for yourself?”
Perhaps, it was the change of tone more than the words. The elephant
raised his trunk and began to coax and whine, for all the world as
though he were telling his side of the story. For a full ten minutes
it continued, the animal man announcing his displeasure, the elephant
pleading. At the end he asked:
“Well, do you think you can be good now?”
Up and down, up and down in an excited affirmative came the answer,
as the elephant bobbed his head, not once, but a dozen times. The
attendant grinned.
“All right then. Go back to your place in line.”
Whereupon a big elephant, head hung low, with every evidence of shame,
with every appearance of an abashed, punished child, rose and trotted
back to his accustomed spot in the picket line. But had that elephant
gained the idea somewhere that he had been perfectly right in his
actions, the attendant might be talking yet!
For an elephant wants what he wants when he wants it, and nothing else
will do. What’s more, he knows what that want is. Seven years ago a
circus sold an elephant to the Salt Lake Zoo. Two weeks later, there
came a telegram:
“Please rush something from the circus. Alice is lonesome.”
The menagerie superintendent looked about for the most available
thing and found Meat, a female Chow dog, a canine hanger-on of the
menagerie. He knew that as a rule, elephants do not like dogs, and that
Alice especially possessed an aversion for them. But he knew also the
workings of animal psychology. Out went the dog by express, and a year
later when the circus passed through Salt Lake in Liberty Park were
two inseparable friends, whose story was known to every person in Salt
Lake. They had even progressed to the status of a little act, by which
they amused Sunday visitors, Alice doing the “sit up,” while the dog
balanced herself on the elephant’s head. Because of the fact that she
had saved a pachyderm from death, caused by loneliness, Meat was the
possessor of a municipally presented collar, engraved with a perpetual
license! While Alice was beaming with elephantine happiness, content in
the possession of a comrade which she loved, not because she was a dog,
but because Meat typified a thing where the big animal had been happy,
a place which had stood for home,--the circus!
CHAPTER VIII
A HUNDRED TONS OF PRANKISHNESS
Continuing the subject of elephants, I remember a pre-season conference
last winter where a circus owner got a new idea. Around the table
were the press representatives, the general agent, the manager and
all the rest of the men whose constant winter activity forms a part
of the preparations for the summer season of a circus; posters and
various sorts of billing were scattered about, letters from performers
desiring contracts were piled high in the wicker receiving baskets, and
suggestions were everywhere. So the circus owner made a suggestion of
his own.
“Got a new catch-line for the bulls,” he announced, as he stared across
the room toward a twenty-four-sheet stand depicting the accomplishments
of the five herds of elephants. “We’ll cut out this stuff about massive
mastodons and ponderous pachyderms and call ’em what they really are--a
hundred tons of prankishness.”
It was a great idea, for a moment. Then one by one, press agent,
manager, general agent, they overruled him. Not that it wasn’t the
truth. Not that it wasn’t a good catch-line. But what would it mean to
the man in the street? Nothing. So another good circus idea went into
the waste basket, the discarding even being approved finally by the
circus owner himself, and all for the reason that the public wouldn’t
know what the show was talking about. For the most interesting things
about elephants are the things they do when the public isn’t there to
pay to watch them! The performances in the ring are only the result
of so many lessons. It’s when school is out, or the tremendous pupil
is playing hookey, that the true elephant nature comes forth, and
naturally that seldom happens during show hours.
[Illustration: SPRING PRACTICE IN THE YARD OF WINTER QUARTERS.]
[Illustration: THE ELEPHANT TURNS NATURALLY TO CLOWNING.]
No matter what natural science may have to say about it, an elephant
has a dual personality. The sage is intermittently present, with his
nervousness, his concentration which makes him hysterically responsive
to the slightest untoward happening, and his deliberate, carefully
conceived actions which show a slow-working but delicately perfect
brain mechanism; while opposed to all this is a school kid, just
crawling out the window of the class-room, mouth drawn down at one
corner, eyes twinkling, and two fingers wiggling in temptation to his
playmates for a session at “hookey” and a dip in the old swimmin’
pool. It is this side of the elephant nature that the ordinary person
seldom sees, and the one which the circus doesn’t advertise. For
it comes forth at about the same time that the mischievousness of the
freckled-faced kid makes its appearance, when nobody’s looking, and
when there’s a hole in the hedge that leads to the watermelon patch.
Speaking of watermelons, it was in Oklahoma, and late summer. Night.
Out on the show grounds, a mile or so away, the audience still was
packed uncomfortably upon the “fourteen-highs,” watching the last half
of the performance, while down in the railroad yards teams were tangled
about the loading runs, the pull-up horses were working ceaselessly,
workmen were shouting and straining, and the first section was fighting
against time for its get-away, that it might hurry on to the next town,
bearing the parade paraphernalia, the menagerie tent, tableau wagons,
dens, cages, led stock, elephants and whatever was possible to be taken
from the show-lot without actually affecting the main performance
itself.
Perhaps you’ve noticed sometimes, on coming from the “big top” or
main tent of a circus at night, that things seem strange, and that
you reach freedom from the dense, massing throngs much sooner than
you had believed possible? It is simply because half the circus has
departed while you have been in the main tent; while the big show has
been in progress, the menagerie, midway, horse tents, blacksmith shop,
cookhouse and practically everything except the big top itself has been
dismantled, loaded, and already is rushing on toward the next show
stand.
So, on this night, while performers worked in the big top, the first
section crew labored in the carbide-illumined stretches of the railroad
yards, struggling to save every minute that the first section might
“high-ball out.” The steel runways shrieked protestingly to their
places aboard the flat cars. The loading was finished, and from the
head of the train to the great, shadowy bulk of the stock and “bull
cars,” far down the tracks, the first section awaited the orders that
would send it jolting and bumping upon its journey of the night. The
conductor gave a command, a lantern raised, the “high-ball” whistle
piped from the engine, and the train began slowly to move.
Only to halt at the command of swift-working emergencies, as
quick-winking lanterns flashed in a hysterical sequence of “wash-out”
signals. A car-knocker had run yelping forth from the depths of the
shadows, his face a conglomeration of pinkish red, his shoulders damp
and his eyes staring.
“Robbers!” he gasped. “Robbers down there in one of those cars! They
hit me on the head!”
“Hit you?” The conductor stared. “What with?”
“A watermelon! Threw it down at me from on top of the car when I bent
over to look at the journals.”
“But--why a watermelon?”
“Well, I guess it was all they had. Anyway, it was enough! It knocked
me out. There are robbers on that car, I’m telling you. Heard ’em
moving around. I probably butted into them--discovered ’em. Beating it
out of town with a bunch of swag and I--.”
It was sufficient to hold the train. Almost anything can hold a circus
train when a town decides there’s the faintest possibility of a thief
aboard. A wild call went out for the town marshal, who responded
from the loading crossing with six hastily summoned deputies. Then,
revolvers drawn, accompanied by circus men with tent stakes and
“laying-out pins” the marshal started down the dark lane beside the
railroad cars in search of the robber band.
The posse reached the spot of the assault and called a command for
surrender. There was no reply, save a queer sound as of tremendous
things skating about inside one of the cars, and a continual sound of
joyous crunching. Again was the command given, to no purpose. About
that time, some one thought to press the button of a flashlight, and
for a full moment thereafter, the posse could only stand and gawk.
Within the “bull car” eight elephants were having the time of their
assorted lives. Here and there they skated and slipped and shambled,
sliding about in a mass of crushed watermelons, their mouths jammed
with the beloved fruit, their heads and shoulders sticky and wet
with the juice, and the whole floor of the car as slick as a skating
pond. A railroad representative arrived, became pompous, then made an
announcement:
“There’ll have to be an arrest made for this, can’t have you circus men
stealing watermelons from railroad property--.”
The boss animal man grinned.
“All right,” he said. “Go right ahead and do your arresting. But it
ain’t circus men you’ll be takin’, it’s elephants.”
As if to prove the assertion, the trunk of the leader of the herd went
forth, between the bars of the “bull car” and into the recesses of a
watermelon car on the next track, to come forth a second later with
another titbit, which was carried within the elephant car, thrown to
the floor, skated upon in kittenish fashion by the rest of the herd
as it rushed greedily forward, then devoured. Investigation showed
that one of the elephants evidently had scented the watermelons in the
opposite car, reached forth, broken the seal, then pushed open the
door, thereupon inviting the rest of the herd to the feast. Evidently
the arrival of the car-knocker had frightened one of the thieves,
causing it to drop the melon it was purloining just at that instant on
the head of the employee who had reported an attack by robbers.
In fact, thieving by elephants is a rather common occurrence. The worst
of it is that they cannot be punished for it. In spite of all the
flub-dub that goes the rounds about the cruelties that are practiced
upon animals, it is next to impossible to punish an elephant, and then
only for some major offense, such as a deliberate attempt at murder.
With the result that minor infractions can be accompanied by little
more than a scolding, which the elephant accepts in much the manner of
a small boy: he appears dreadfully downcast, cries and trumpets, goes
to his knees as though to promise that it never will happen again and
then, at the first opportunity, proceeds to do as he pleases.
A circus with which I once was connected suddenly hired two private
detectives. “Prowlers” had fastened themselves upon the show, evidently
riding the flat cars at night, and then, when the long circus train was
asleep, raiding the sleeping cars, stealing everything from pictures
to pocketbooks. In fact, from the indications, the thieves were plain
kleptomaniacs; it seemed to make little difference what they took, just
so they had something to show for their work of the night.
For a full week the detectives labored diligently, searching the cars,
investigating the personnel of the men who rode the flats at night,
even looking into the “possum bellies” beneath the coaches. Nothing was
discovered. The thieves worked like wraiths; doors were locked, but
they stole just the same. Then one morning, just before dawn, as the
two sections lay beside each other in the railroad yards, a performer
and his wife suddenly awakened with the knowledge that their covering
had been yanked from them and whisked through the open window!
The method of the thieves at last had been discovered. The nights were
hot, the windows of the coaches were open. Evidently the robber or
robbers worked with a stepladder, climbing up beside the windows and
then pilfering the berths through the open windows. But when lights
had been obtained, the car porter aroused, and the performers dressed
to proceed with an outside investigation, the theories suffered a
setback. The bull car was opposite that coach. Whereupon, the elephant
superintendent decided upon a search.
Carefully concealed in the straw bedding of the big car, the loot
was found: a silver-backed hair-brush, three pocketbooks containing
various amounts of money, two mirrors, a corset, one fringed bed cover
which evidently had just been hidden, the remains of a man’s straw
hat, fifteen photographs purloined from the decorations of the various
berths, a Titian-hued “switch,” a Palm Beach coat, the remains of a
bag of candy, four pencils, one shoe and a collar button! After that,
the two sections were spotted at different places and the mysterious
robberies ceased. That is, as far as the performers were concerned. But
the bull cars remained always a source of revenue; principally the tops
of milk cans, snatched from trucks as the circus trains passed through
the various stations.
This is humorous enough for the outsider, but sad indeed for the circus
man. From long years of tradition, there still lurks the belief that
the showman is a natural thief, and on circus day the first intimation
of a missing article leads to suspicion against the nearest person
who happens to be with the “opery.” One day we were pulling in late
and proceeding slowly that the trains might be “spotted” without the
necessity of switching. Repairs were being made on the road, and beside
the through tracks was a switch filled with hand-cars belonging to
the railroad workmen, upon which they had left their coats and dinner
buckets. No sooner had the train stopped than a red-necked section
foreman appeared with the town constable and the announcement that some
circus man, the dir-rty blaggard, had stolen four dinner pails from the
hand-cars as the circus train passed! The show denied the assertion.
The foreman reiterated it. A crowd began to gather, and there loomed in
the offing the possibility of one of those things which a circus fears
simply because it knows its own strength--a “Hey Rube,” or general
fight. Then, just when things seemed to be getting beyond control, the
circus “fixer” began to work on a system of deduction.
If there is anything which a circus man doesn’t have to bother about,
it is something to eat. The chief means by which a circus manages to
exist without paying high salaries is through providing good food and
plenty of it. Therefore, it was rather silly to believe that circus
men should steal cold luncheons when there was hot food in the offing.
There was left one real possibility and the “fixer” led the way to
the elephant cars. There were the four buckets, hidden in the straw,
their contents untouched! All of which turned out, incidentally, to
the show’s advantage. That night, the section hands brought all their
friends to the show to see the ellyphants that had stolen the dinner
buckets!
They’re a constant round of mischief, those elephants. Something’s
always happening. The show train was on the down-grade one morning,
late, and fighting to make up time so that it might at least stand a
chance of giving a performance that afternoon. Suddenly the emergencies
clamped hard, performers scattered around the sleeping cars, animals
howled, cages slipped from their fastenings and began to wobble about
the flat cars as the air pressure was exerted its utmost to halt the
progress of the speeding section. The conductor, nonplused, scrambled
along the flats, reaching the first one just as the train halted.
“What’re you stopping for?” he shouted to the engineer.
“Ask yourself the same question!” came the retort. “You flagged me
down.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Am I? Well, take a look for yourself; your brakeman’s still at it!”
The conductor looked back along the train. Far in the rear, atop a
car, a big piece of canvas was being waved wildly, frantically. Still
wondering, the conductor retraced his steps.
The train had passed through a small town a short time before. On the
next track had been a flat car loaded with a new automobile, which,
in turn was covered by a tarpaulin. The opportunity had been too
good to miss. Old Mom had reached out between the bars of the bull
car, yanked the tarpaulin off on the fly, dragged it within the car,
played tug-of-war with it for a time with the rest of the elephants,
distributing pieces to the remainder of the herd as the tarpaulin was
torn to shreds, then, in an ecstasy of play, had looked about for a
place high enough in which she might wave what was left over her head.
This had been provided in a ventilator, which she had shoved open, and
through which she had extended her trunk, with the canvas waving to
the winds. But up ahead the engineer had known nothing of the nature
of elephants. He had seen only trouble, and he had clamped on those
emergencies.
To tell the truth, clamping on the emergencies is about the most
frequent thing about the circus when the elephants are concerned. No
one ever is able to tell what they’re going to do, or when they’re
going to do it. Their prankishness runs the whole gamut of everything
that ever entered the head of a ten-year-old boy; their curiosity is
worse than that of a monkey; and their uncertainty is as widespread as
that of the proverbial flighty woman. Which leads to the adventure of
Alice and the tin can.
Alice was a bulbous young lady of some forty-five seasons under the
big tops, and carrying seven tons of avoirdupois. As sometimes happens
when the feminine goes to bulk, she enjoyed dainty things and light
exercises, such as smashing tin cans. If there was anything that Alice
loved, it was a city junk heap, where the universe was one vast expense
of cans, to do with as she chose. When Alice became “logy” during the
hot days, or afflicted with colic, or dumpy and ill-at-ease and down on
the world in general, the bull-keeper gave her none of the restoratives
which he applied to the rest of the herd. He merely asked the route to
the city dump and led Alice there. That night she would be her own
bulbous self again, happy and serene, while the tin-can section of the
dump heap resembled the path of a steam roller.
The elephant seemed to gain a strange delight from the sensation of
applying her weight to a can and squashing it, and the more cans, the
more happiness. I have even seen the elephant deliberately drop the
tail of her predecessor in parade, walk out of line, apply one massive
hoof to a can in a gutter, squeal with delight, and then trot back to
her work. But Alice mashes tin cans no longer. She is cured.
It happened about five years ago on the circus grounds in a small
town in California. Alice had been working. At least, she had been
pretending that she was working. In company with a male elephant who
really was doing all the labor, Alice had been carefully placing her
bulky head about an eighth of an inch from the back ends of circus
wagons; then, snorting, squealing and apparently straining every
muscle, she had allowed the other elephant to do all the work while
she, in turn, kept her eye out for a stray can.
It was the noon hour. The parade had returned, the cookhouse was in
full swing, crowded by performers and workingmen. At one side was a
collection of four or five five-gallon cans, which once had contained
pie apples and which had been opened only enough to allow their
contents to be poured forth by the rushing cookhouse crew. Alice
spotted them. Then Alice looked toward the bull-man. He was fifty feet
away, talking to the boss of the herd. Quietly--and an elephant can
move so softly that it is almost impossible to hear it--Alice veered
away from the wagon she had been pretending to push, smashed a can
or two, then halted with a marvelous discovery. There was something
sweet-smelling inside, the remains of the apple contents. Alice moved
to the next can and investigated. In went the trunk, its “fingers”
working in investigative fashion. The elephant scooped up a part of
the residue, tasted it, liked it and reached for more, the work this
time being a bit difficult, owing to the fact that there wasn’t much
left. And as Alice pushed the end of her trunk about inside that can,
she allowed a catastrophe to plump upon her. Absent-mindedly she forgot
that her trunk was inside, and allowed the old smashing urge to return.
Up went a heavy foot, poised over the can, and then came down!
The next thing the circus knew, one end of the cookhouse had departed,
while performers were scattering, tables were overturned, canvas
fluttered in the breeze, and a screeching elephant ran wildly for the
free and open country, her trunk waving wildly in a vain effort to
rid itself of a five-gallon can which had clamped upon it with the
tightness of a vise. A small tree got in the way, then got out, roots,
branches and all. Whistles shrilled on the circus lot, bull-men ran
for fast horses, animal attendants rushed wildly from their work in
the menagerie to scurry forth upon a path of broken fences, disabled
back yards, uprooted saplings and what-not, while far in the distance
Alice still plunged on, the can still clinging to its victim, like a
cream pitcher on the head of a cat. A half-hour later they caught her,
chained her and removed the can, while Alice squealed and trumpeted
her delight. Then, free at last, she looked at the thing which had
distressed her, jumped on it with swift-moving forefeet and crushed it
to a flat mass, gingerly examined it, pronounced it safe, then raised
it and threw it as far as the sweep of her trunk permitted. After
which, a bit saddened, still grunting and “talking” to herself, she
returned to the show grounds. Now Alice passes up tin cans. There’s a
sort of disdain about her action. No more does the city dump resemble a
sort of heaven to her. Once was too much. She’s on the wagon.
However, “the wagon” is not mentioned in the alcoholic sense. I have
yet to see the elephant that is a believer in prohibition. Which
reminds me of a beer party that still is circus history, and which led
to one of the queerest exhibitions of the circus business.
It happened in Venice, California, where a big show maintained its
winter quarters for a season. Things had been a bit slack in the line
of entertainment and the menagerie crew had decided upon a Dutch lunch,
timing it so that there would be no interruption from the manager. The
usual limburger and wienies were purchased, as well as the necessary
Dill pickles and the case of beer. Everything was set. The luncheon was
spread; the menagerie crew was about to seat itself when there came a
hurried announcement from the night watchman, entering on the run:
“Nix! Ditch the eats and the brew! Here comes the Old Man!”
Frenzied activity. One concerted swoop and the food had been piled
into a covered grain box, while the case of beer was hidden in the
straw behind the elephant line. When the owner entered with a group of
persons whom he had brought on a sight-seeing tour, the menagerie house
presented only a dormant place, with men sleeping beneath the cages and
the night watchman propped back in a chair. The Old Man led the way to
the picket line.
“Now here are the elephants,” he began, “we--” Then he halted at the
sight of one of the herd nonchalantly taking a drink from a bottle!
“Night watch!” he called. “Rajah’s got a bottle--take it away from him!
He’s liable to cut himself.”
But Rajah wouldn’t let go. He flapped his ears and trumpeted and
squealed--but held on. Just then the owner noticed something more; the
fact that the leader of the herd had raised another bottle, regarded it
calmly, as a toper would test the clearness of the brew, then placing
it on the ground, had pried off the cap with a big toenail and now was
drinking also! There came an excited accusation to the effect that his
night watchman was attempting to get the herd drunk. Only one thing was
possible, a confession of the facts, and the watchman made it. For a
moment the owner frowned. Then:
“You know I kick against drinking around these quarters. But--” and he
grinned--“you’ve given me a hunch that’s worth it. Tell the boys to go
ahead with their shindig.”
The next day an advertisement appeared. The circus paid a great share
of its winter quarters’ expenses that year by charging an admission
price to see the elephants drink beer!
Incidentally, it was this same winter which brought forth another
unusual attraction,--that of the biggest rat-killer in the world. The
animal barn was not the newest place in the world, and in the wall
beside Beelgie’s position in the picket line, was a rat-hole. One day a
rat came forth.
Beelgie jumped, squealed and struck with his trunk, all at the same
instant, and got the rodent! The animal men saw him quiver with
fright, strain at his chains, flop about as though to incite the rest
of the herd to flight, fail, and then, pulling back, regard for a long
moment the intruder which he had killed. At last, satisfied, he turned
his attention upon the rat-hole, and watched it carefully, at last
sliding down on his haunches, with his trunk tight curled, ready for
the next invasion.
All afternoon he remained in that position; no cat was ever more
faithful. But the intruder didn’t arrive. Whereupon a menagerie man,
with a sense of humor, got an idea.
The next morning Beelgie again took a look at the rat-hole. And as he
did, a rodent popped forth!
Whang-g-g-g!
An elephantine trunk had descended, and Beelgie, squealing and
fretting, slumped again into his watchful position. No more than he had
set himself than another appeared, only to pop back into the hole the
minute Beelgie struck at him. Nor could the worried elephant know that
the intruder was nothing but a stuffed affair, fastened by a strong
rubber band to the interior of the hole and pulled forth at will by
a fine wire in the hands of the menagerie attendant across the barn.
In fact, Beelgie knew nothing except the fact that the Pied Piper of
Hamelin had nothing on him. Three rats. Three blows. Three deaths. So
far he was batting a thousand, and he settled himself for an all-day
vigil. Word of it traveled to the management. The populace that winter
bought the hay for the elephants. Or rather Beelgie bought it, as the
chief exhibit, because he killed that stuffed rat, regularly, ten or
fifteen times a day until the show took to the road again, and the
townspeople paid their dimes to see him do it! Everything’s grist in
the circus mill.
Everything but Sunday on the lot. For then, as a general rule, it’s
the other way round, especially when the elephants are concerned. It
is necessary, except when a long run is to be made and a tremendous
distance bridged between two towns, for a circus to “Sunday on the
lot,” that is: set up its tents, clean the circus from end to end,
repaint poles, repair damage that has been done during the hard
traveling of the week, rest the horses and animals, and in general make
ready for another six days of constant effort and fighting against time
that the show may live true to its billing and its promises of “two
performances a day, rain or shine.” It is a time of general overhauling
and of rest, a time of relaxation; the elephants’ delight, and the
bull-man’s misery. For it is during Sunday on the lot--just as it is
with a great many small boys on Sunday--that the elephants think up
most of their prankishness. When a “bull” becomes mischievous, it costs
money.
One Sunday night in Texas, the night watchman, making his final rounds,
noticed that every elephant stood sleepily at the picket pin, and then
rolled under a lion cage for a few hours’ sleep of his own. Dawn came
and he awoke. All the elephants were still there; everything was quiet.
But not so an hour later!
An irate brickyard keeper had appeared, with a sleepy-eyed attorney,
hastily summoned from bed. The elephants had ruined his place during
the night! A brick kiln had been demolished, piles of bricks scattered
and destroyed, the mixer overturned and broken, and the various stacks
of tile shattered. The elephants had done it. There began the argument.
The elephants couldn’t have done it; they hadn’t been out of the
menagerie! The night watchman testified to the fact; the menagerie
workers told of having seen the elephants when they left at night and
when they arrived at dawn, perfectly peaceable at the stake line. The
argument grew warmer. The legal adjuster was summoned, and then some
one suggested that they go to the brickyard.
There the evidence was irrefutable. Everywhere showed the big tracks
of an elephant, and the chase led back to the circus. There was no way
to controvert the statements of the brickyard owner now. There were
no other elephants within a thousand miles. And so the search for the
culprit began, to finish as rapidly. Old Mom, the leader of the herd,
had been caught red-handed.
Or rather, red-legged. The whole rear expanse of her hind legs, from
her hoofs to her hips, was beautifully rouged with brick dust, where
she had backed up to a pile of bricks and scratched herself! She had
untied the half-hitch of her chain from the picket stake, carefully
carried it in her trunk, gone under the side wall, enjoyed a night out,
wrecked the brickyard, then returned to the menagerie tent and with
one twisting toss--a trick, incidentally, which she took delight in
teaching other elephants--had placed that half-hitch back on the stake
again!
Nor was Old Mom’s trick unusual. It seems characteristic of elephants
to desire to take a night out for themselves every so often.
In August, a few years ago, a big show was spending Sunday night on a
fair grounds. It was hot, sultry. Three times that day the elephants
had been watered at an old hand-pump close to the menagerie tent; in
fact, the whole circus had been forced to gain its water from this
source.
Three-thirty o’clock came in the morning. The menagerie superintendent,
sleeping in the animal tent, awoke drowsily to the sound of incessant
pumping. On and on it went--pump, pump, pump, squeak, squeak,
squeak--accompanied by the intermittent splashing of water. Minute
after minute he lay there, wondering when those men ever would get
their buckets filled, and speculating as to why circus workmen should
be so eager for water at this hour of the morning. Then suddenly there
came to him the possibility of fire. He rose hurriedly, ducked under
the side wall, stared into the semidarkness, and then stood for a
solid five minutes, watching, and laughing. Out there at the pump was
an elephant which evidently had become thirsty and had sneaked from
the picket line, remembering that pump and the coolness of the water.
It was he that was making the noise, he who was working the pump. The
ground about him was a muddy mass from the outpourings of the faucet,
for there had been a difficulty about it all. He evidently had been
there for hours, striving to work the pump-handle with his trunk and at
the same time get it under the spout! At last:
“Hey, Major! What the dickens are you trying to do there?”
The elephant halted. He had done wrong in sneaking away, and he knew
it. Squealing excitedly, he jumped from the side of the pump, skidded
in lopsided fashion through the mud, ducked under the side walling
and ran so hard to take his place in line again that he missed in his
calculations and upset a cage, which cost seventy-five dollars to
repair. There’s usually a bill to be paid somewhere when an elephant
takes a vacation!
CHAPTER IX
THE KEEPER OF THE BULLS
Please forgive a garrulity when the subject is elephants and the
narrator a circus man. They are so many-sided, these pachyderms, so
lovable, so exasperating and so fearful, that their complete story is a
far greater one than that of all the other menagerie animals combined.
In previous chapters there has been a recording of the sagacity and
humorous sides of their natures. But there is another angle, that of
the time when they become obstreperous, amenable to only one man--the
“keeper of the bulls.”
There are certain well-founded American traditions regarding the
equally American circus which it seems almost sacrilege to disturb. For
instance, it has been handed from generation to generation that when a
big show goes into territory comprised of many small towns the circus
splits into several parts like the fabled joint snake and exhibits in
three or four places at once. Again, it’s a certainty that the fiercest
beasts in captivity are the lions and the tigers, and that if ever
one of them should escape it at once would vent the pent-up rage of
years of imprisonment by killing every one in sight. By the same line
of reasoning the bravest man on the whole blatant organization must
be the lion trainer, who twice daily--rain or shine--goes into the
dens with these beasts and by a narrow margin comes forth with skin
and body still hanging together. A different existence indeed from
that of the bull-man--who has nothing to do save to keep his placid,
gigantic, ever-begging charges from eating too many peanuts, to bring
them forth now and then that they may push a few wagons complacently
around the lot, or trot them into the ring during the crowded hours
of the performance to do the hootchy-kootchy in their lumbering,
comical fashion, to play a big mouth harp with their trunks until that
laughing, easy-going trainer takes it away from them, to cavort at a
pachydermic game of baseball or bear the million-dollar beauty around
the arena at the head of the grand entrée. All in all, comparatively
speaking, it would seem much easier than shooting a blank-cartridged
revolver into the bellowing jaws of a roaring lion. Of course he must
be handy always to warn the uneducated that his big, clumsy charges
hate tobacco, and that they never forget an injury, but those are only
little idiosyncrasies which bob up even with some human beings. No
matter how placid a person or beast may be--
But to get back to the traditions. A show never splits and never
exhibits in several places at once. The lion and tiger trainer has his
troubles, it is true, but his is not the hardest job of the show. And
the life of the elephant keeper isn’t placid!
For, as it often happens with traditions, the usual reasoning is wrong.
In the first place, the bulls are not placid, just as they are not
clumsy, just as they do not remember an injury for years and just as
they do not promptly set upon the man who insults their taste with a
juicy plug of tobacco. Perhaps, long, long ago there may have been a
solitary elephant that disliked nicotine, but times evidently have
changed. To-day a plug of tobacco is a titbit for any elephant, and
more than once is a visitor’s pocket ransacked by an inquiring trunk
searching for a chew. Elephants eat tobacco just as they eat sugar cane
or pop corn or peanuts or candy. To them it is a delicacy. Nor is the
taste confined only to chewing tobacco; if you’ll keep your eyes open
the next time you go to a circus you may even see elephants shooting
snipes, where visitors have dropped their cigar butts along the picket
line. Which ends that.
Their memories are no longer than those of any other intelligent
animal, and their clumsiness and slowness are things that exist only
in appearance. As for the relationship of ease between the lot of the
keeper of the lions and the keeper of the bulls, the lion trainer
leads a bored existence. All that is necessary for him to do is to keep
a whip rein on a group of beasts, and by a reasonable amount of care
guard his own skin. The keeper of the bulls has an entirely different
task.
[Illustration: IN WINTER QUARTERS.]
[Illustration: IN THE ACT OF A BREAKAWAY.]
Inconsistency is a thing which surrounds an elephant on every side
in his life in the circus. Just as he is the best-liked beast of the
menagerie, so is he the most feared. Just as he is the thing that must
be counted upon literally to drag the show out of the mud when the
mire of a wet circus lot has sunk every wagon to the wheel hubs and so
entangled the heavy conveyances that horseflesh, even tractors, lose
their efficiency, so on the very next day he may wreck everything he
has worked so hard to save. He will swing forward confidently to the
attack, should a lion make a breakaway, but the proximity of a mouse
or even a small, harmless snake on a country wayside is the signal for
hysteria. He will carry a cannon on his back into a performance and
stand immobile while the booming charge breaks in deafening fashion
above him, and then, on the next Fourth of July, “go flighty” at
the popping of a penny firecracker. He will remain at a picket line
through confusion and turmoil while thousands of persons crowd about
him, then pull up stakes and chase the daylights out of a candy vender
who consistently offends him by selling dainties among the show goers
instead of distributing them free along the elephant line. He is the
most sagacious animal in captivity, yet, when he becomes frightened he
doesn’t know enough to turn out of the way of a brick building. His
daily food consists of fully two hundred pounds of roughage, a few
pounds of coal which he munches greedily if he can but get it, a bushel
or so of grain, ten or twenty pounds of pure dirt--chocolate loam or
swamp muck preferred--and a tub or two of water, yet he will quit it
all gladly for one lonely peanut or a piece of candy. In the circus
world they’ve changed an old, old expression to fit their own needs:
“Inconsistency--thy name is elephant!”
For, it seems, the paradox is a continual thing with the great
pachyderms which form the backbone of practically every circus. There
is never a time in which they are not depended upon to save the show in
times of late arrivals, muddy or sandy lots, or on long hauls from the
unloading runs to the exhibition grounds, when the two or three tons
of flesh and bone and muscle which every elephant possesses are thrown
into play to augment the efforts of the straining draft stock and
chugging tractors. Yet, by the same token, upon one man and one alone,
depends the task of keeping them the placid, humorous clowns which they
really should be, the keeper of the bulls.
In explanation, a herd of elephants--and in some of the big circuses
a herd will number as high as twenty-five members--is built upon the
monarchial system, with a princess or two, a queen and a king in
control. The princesses and queen are elephants; the only male ruler
allowed is the superintendent of the herd, the man to whom the queen,
or leader, vows allegiance. No matter what other men may do, what
other men may command, if the keeper of the herd decides otherwise,
then otherwise is the result. The leader obeys him above all others;
the princesses obey her, and the male members tag along in a group of
bulky camp followers, citizens, agitators and revolutionists. The males
make the trouble in an elephant monarchy, the females make the laws and
enforce them.
As an example: Old Mom and her herd were in Canada several years
ago, and one of its stands was Winnipeg. The performances were dated
for Monday and, as is usual with a circus, the show had arrived in
town a day ahead. The tents had been erected, the seats placed, the
animals fed and exercised, the ring curbs fastened into position, the
hippodrome track smoothed into readiness, the rigging for the various
aerial acts set, and the circus had settled to rest.
In the menagerie the lions and tigers nodded sleepily, with nothing
to disturb them from their Sunday slothfulness. The elephant picket
line was calm and peaceful, the long trunks weaving lazily at the
transference of a full portion of roughage from ground to mouth. Group
by group the circus people departed from the lot, townward bound, for
the usual Sunday stroll and the luxury of a night in a hotel instead of
the cramped berths of the sleepers. Only the watchmen were left about
the various tents, only the assistants in the menagerie.
Night came, starlit and peaceful. The torches began to gleam about
the circus grounds, spots of limited brilliance barely sufficient to
provide protection against the pitfalls of stakes and wagon tongues
and tight-pulled guy ropes. Hours passed in torpid peace. Down town
the superintendent of the elephant herd, Fred Alispaw, seated himself
at the table of a night restaurant and glanced across toward his wife,
awaiting her decision on the menu of an after-theater supper. He called
a waiter. He began the giving of an order. Then suddenly the café,
the street, the city were in darkness, following a green blaze of
lightning and its consequent crash of thunder. A moment more and the
rain was pelting, borne at the fore of a forty-mile gale. Winnipeg all
in a second had become a storm-stricken city, its lights extinguished
by a lightning bolt which had struck one of the main feed wires, its
street-car service blocked, its streets running small rivers from the
rain, its every activity for the moment halted. In the café diners
laughed, struck matches and waited for the lights to come on again,
all but one man, stumbling through the darkness toward the doorway,
Fred Alispaw, keeper of the bulls.
“Stay here until the lights come on!” he ordered hastily of his wife.
“I’ve got to get to the lot!”
“But the cars are stopped.”
“Can’t help that. I’ll find a taxi! I’ve got to get to the lot!”
Out into the sheetlike rain he went, to leap to the running board of
the first passing automobile and literally commandeer it for a trip to
the circus grounds several miles away. His experience with elephants
and the instinctive knowledge of what the beasts might do under
circumstances such as this demanded swift action, and plenty of it.
More, intuition proved correct!
The storm had struck as suddenly at the circus grounds as in the
city. With the first flash of lightning the wind had swept through
the menagerie tent with galelike force, lifting the side walling and
causing it to slap and bellow and snap in queer ghostly fashion. The
elephant herd, peaceful and drowsing at its double row of stakes only a
moment before, had heard and seen!
There was no keeper to reassure them; only assistants. To an elephant
an assistant counts for little if the supreme voice is absent, and
right at that moment Alispaw was miles away. In vain the menagerie men
sank their bull-hooks into the ears of the plunging charges, then,
bobbing about like so many plummets, strove in vain to hold the beasts
in line. Even Old Mom, the head of the herd, had become panicky with
the rest, not from fear of the storm but from the fright caused by
the sight of that twisting, writhing side wall as it had shown for an
instant in the glare of the lightning. To the elephants it represented
some unknown bellowing monster about to attack; the unexplained thing
always means trouble in an elephant herd. So the stampede had begun.
One by one the extra stakes were dragged from the ground. One by one
the frantic animal attendants were thrown aside or knocked down by the
flail-like blows of tossing trunks. The thunder now bore an obbligato
of screaming, hissing cat animals, crouched in fear in their dens,
of shouting men, of rending stakes, clanking chains and squealing,
trumpeting elephants. Then still another thunder, that of ton-heavy
bodies plunging across the menagerie tent, the crashing of timbers as
they knocked poles and cages from their path, and the stampede of the
nine-elephant herd was on! A moment later the stages, the poles, the
seats and grand stand of the main tent were splintering and snapping
as some sixty thousand pounds of fear-maddened elephant flesh tore
madly here and there in the big inclosure, rushing wildly, then
wheeling as frantically in the other direction as a lightning flash
showed that writhing, flapping thing of wind-blown canvas surrounding
them on every side. Greater and greater the frenzy became; in the
milling two of the males collided and began to fight with swift
smashing rushes and lashing trunks. Louder and louder became the
squealing and trumpeting--suddenly to lull. A voice had come faintly
from the darkness of the menagerie tent--every torch long had been
extinguished--a voice which caused Old Mom to turn and to trumpet with
a new note.
“Mom--Mom! Here I am!”
Again the call sounded and Old Mom answered, the queen obeying the
command of her overlord. The fighting ceased. A new signal sounded from
the throat of Old Mom. The elephants steadied. A moment later Alispaw,
standing in the connection between the menagerie and the main tent, saw
revealed in a flash of lightning a great hulking shadow coming slowly
but steadily toward him, while in the rear there followed eight others,
practically abreast! Old Mom had heard the voice she sought. That was
enough!
[Illustration: OLD MOM AND HER GIRL FRIEND FREIDA.]
[Illustration: KAS AND MO WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN AMERICA.]
But the fight had only begun. The storm now was taking on a new
intensity, a new fury, and the trainer knew that he had but two allies,
Mom and Frieda, her elephantine lady in waiting. As soon as possible he
caught the two elephants by their ears and stood between them, talking
to them, reassuring them, while they wrapped their trunks about
him and squealed their delight, while the rest of the herd milled and
trumpeted about them, each crowding its utmost to be near the thing
which to them meant safety. For nearly an hour it continued, with
the fate of the show in the hands of one man, literally buried in a
bumping, jostling mass of thirty tons of frightened elephants--one man
whom they trusted and whose presence alone could hold them against
a new panic. Then slowly, with the aid of his assistants and a lone
flickering torch, he began the task of working the mammals back to
their picket line.
For Mom and for Frieda it was comparatively easy. For the rest it was a
far more difficult task. Alispaw could not be in every place at once,
and the moment the herd became strung out to the slightest degree there
would be a concerted rush to be near the lead elephants and the keeper
who guided them. In vain the assistants strove to drive them back, and
at last one of the men, losing his head, struck violently at one of the
beasts with an iron-tipped tent stake, only to miscalculate. The blow
struck Alispaw, and he dropped unconscious, and the note of fright in
Old Mom’s bellow brought a new spasm of fear and a resumption of the
milling to the rest of the herd.
Once more they circled and crowded--all but one. That one was Old Mom,
half crouched over the prostrate trainer, whimpering and touching him
with her trunk, and through her frightened curiosity forming a bulwark
against the rest of the surging herd. For a full five minutes this
continued; then, dizzy and reeling, the keeper crawled to his feet and
renewed his calls of assurance. The storm lessened. Slowly Old Mom
wheeled into place at the picket line and submitted to her chains.
Frieda came beside her; then, still trembling, still grunting and
squealing and protesting, the rest followed. Daylight found the picket
line again a thing of comparatively peaceful elephants, and all because
of one man!
Nor is this at all unusual. Strictly otherwise. With the Barnum and
Bailey Circus is a quiet gentle-voiced man who has been the keeper
of the show’s big herd of elephants for more than a quarter of a
century, while his aid at the head of the herd is an ancient lady of
some eighty-five summers who can read his every intonation, his every
command, and who forces her will upon the rest of the herd, or knows
the reason why! In elephantdom there appears to be a certain respect
for superiority; the leader of the herd attacks with impunity any
beast under her control, no matter how fierce it may be, how big or
how favored in fighting proclivities. In the winter quarters of one
of the Western circuses is a glaring patch of cement work which a few
years ago stopped up a gaping hole of some ten feet in diameter where
a leader elephant butted a recalcitrant member of her herd through an
eighteen-inch brick wall! When the keeper of a herd has the allegiance
of that herd’s leader he has fought half his battle. But that keeper
may be forced to leave suddenly, and what then?
That’s exactly the question every circus owner asks when there is a
sudden shift in the superintendency of the elephant line, and in which
there is no time to work in a new keeper gradually as the person in
command. More than once it has meant trouble, not only to the circus
but to the elephant. In view of this, enter Snyder.
They called him the biggest elephant in captivity. Whether he was or
not, he was one of the best performers, one of the most intractable,
and at the same time one of the most valuable. When Snyder departed
this life it meant that a twenty-five thousand-dollar performing
tusker, trained to walk on his hind hoofs about the whole circumference
of the hippodrome track, at the same time carrying his trainer on
his three-foot tusks, left the circus world forever. As a result his
trainers were selected with care and the slightest evidence of must, or
badness, in his eyes was the signal for instant and various activities
to hold him from a stampede. Far better to keep a valuable elephant out
of parades and performances--even to imprison him day after day in
the bull cars--than to run the risk of a rampage which may end in the
necessity for an execution.
Consequently Henry Boucher, a trainer, was eased into Snyder’s life
with all the care of the launching of a yacht when his old keeper
resigned a few years ago. The elephant gradually accepted his new
master, then came to love him. Two years passed, in which Boucher held
the big performer safe from runaways, stampedes and temperamental
outbreaks. Then, a year ago, in Salina, Kansas, the trainer became
violently ill and was forced to leave the circus on short notice.
The next day Snyder grunted and snorted and trumpeted in vain. His
trainer was gone. That afternoon the beast was kept out of performance,
and he weaved uneasily at his picket chain, slapping his trunk
viciously at every passing candy seller--how every elephant hates
them--even refusing food. His eyes began to cloud slightly, the first
indication of must. The matinée performance ended, and an assistant,
assigned to the position of substitute trainer, released the chain
which held the be-tusked brute and led him into the empty big top, or
main tent, for a first rehearsal under new management.
Snyder listened to just one command. Then with a rush he knocked
the substitute from his path, splintered the quarter poles which
crisscrossed before him, smashed a path through a tier of seats, broke
through the side walling, lowered his head, then with a great butting
lurch overturned the first wagon he saw, headed back through the side
walling of the menagerie, seized the monkey cage at its tongue base
with his trunk and threw it from him like a boy throwing a baseball.
The cat animals began to roar and screech; he made for the dens, one
by one, and overturned them. The hippopotamus grunted excitedly in his
five-ton den, and Snyder rushed for it like the maddened thing he was;
an impact followed like the crashing of runaway engines, and the den,
with its bulky freight, catapulted through the side wall and ten feet
clear of the tent.
They tried to surround him by peaceful elephants, to mingle him with
the rest of the herd and thus return him to captivity. It was useless.
Snyder had turned renegade; he recognized no superior and he fought the
leader of the herd with the same frenzy that he fought any inanimate
object which blocked his path. So at last they sent for rifles; nor was
it long before twenty-five thousand dollars in elephant flesh became
only an object for a museum. Four steel bullets in his brain had ended
the career of an elephant which had refused to recognize any one but
the master of his choice.
So you see there are grounds for that circus saying regarding
inconsistency. Once an elephant becomes thoroughly angry, little can
block his path. Yet in the regular course of events that same elephant
actually can be afraid of his own shadow!
On one of the big shows are Kas and Mo, named respectively and
respectfully for Kansas and Missouri. Both are what are known to the
bull-men as agitators, both flighty, unreasoning, and seemingly always
anxious to find something that will serve as an excuse for trouble.
Both also are punks, the circus name for anything not yet full grown,
and the lack of maturity in age may account for the equal absence of
steadiness in character. In any event their course has been a stormy
one. Their first day on the show, when they arrived fresh from India in
the care of a Singhalese, ended with a general stampede of the entire
herd when the two punks decided to run straight through it without an
introduction; the panic, although it lasted only the length of a city
block, resulted in nearly a thousand dollars in damages. The first
windy day after their arrival brought a breakaway on their part, and
the danger of a like action on the part of the adult members of the
herd. The first parade was one of constant attempts at runaways and
the smashing of a two-hundred-dollar plate-glass window. Finally there
came the time when, at the slightest hint of any unusual happening, Kas
and Mo were loaded hurriedly into the first available wagon and sent
unceremoniously to the cars. This continued during the entire first
season.
However, elephant trainers are persistent beings, and all that winter
the keeper of the herd labored with Kas and Mo to bring them to a
condition of dependability. To every possible noise, action and
circumstance that might cause fear on their part they were subjected,
until the flighty brutes were considered proof against anything that
might occur on a circus lot. Then they were turned over to Lucia
Zora, wife of the menagerie superintendent, for a novelty in elephant
training--the driving of the diminutive pachyderms in tandem style
before a flower-bedecked two-wheel cart. It really seemed that Kas and
Mo had reformed. They learned quickly; they obeyed every command.
Springtime came and the show went forth to its first exhibition stand,
rehearsing, as is usual, for three days before the opening date.
Everything was lovely. Kas and Mo, garlanded and festooned with strands
of paper flowers, took their place in the grand entrée like veterans.
Zora was pleased. So was the keeper of the bulls. So was the owner of
the show. So was every one. The past was forgotten.
The opening day arrived. Kas and Mo went into parade with their woman
trainer, their garlands of roses and their high-wheeled cart, looking
neither to the right nor to the left. At the afternoon performance they
moved into their position in the elephant section of the grand entrée
in a manner both joyous and faithful. Night arrived, the chandeliers
gleamed, the signal to prepare for entrée sounded from the whistle of
the equestrian director, and the punks took their place at the head
of the section, awaiting the time when the rest of the entrée should
emerge from the flags, or performers’ entrance, that they, with the
remainder of the menagerie exhibits, might enter at the other end of
the tent, thus filling the hippodrome track simultaneously. At the head
of the tandem was Kas, somewhat anxiously awaiting the signal to start.
At the left was a low-hung chandelier which caught the beast’s body and
silhouetted it against the near-by side wall of the menagerie tent.
Beyond was a main tent filled with gaping spectators, staring vapidly
toward the empty rings and stages and hippodrome track, waiting for the
show to begin. And just then Kas saw its shadow on the side wall.
The punk grunted and raised its trunk. Over at the side wall that
mysterious thing raised its trunk also. Kas fidgeted. So did the
shadow. The big ears of Kas distended in fright. Over there a pair of
black ears moved in unison. Everything that Kas did was immediately
aped by that thing on the wall. It was too much.
A squeal, a snort, then suddenly the crowded tent saw a tandem team of
elephants pitch through the gay dividing curtain and swing into the
hippodrome track at full speed, the rose-bedecked cart careening behind
them on one wabbling wheel, and behind this the entire elephant herd,
following excitedly and without a reason save the fact that Kas and Mo
were leading the way. A moment later the cart hit a ring curb, while
the bespangled Lucia Zora dived gracefully and far through the air to
a dazed position on a pile of canvas, and the runaway elephant parade
went on!
Around the hippodrome track they thundered, two squealing baby
elephants in the lead, ten excited, bewildered adult beasts in the
rear, and the whole shouting, panting menagerie force trailing
vainly in their dust. The first curve came and the punks left their
cart leaning in drunken, awry fashion where it had collided with a
center-pole. The second, and they tangled in their flower-decorated
harness, but they went on! A third curve, a fourth, then straight
through the dividing curtain they plunged again, the rest of the herd
after them, and back to their places in the picket line! Meanwhile
out there in the main tent an amused crowd stared again at an empty
hippodrome track, not knowing whether the whole thing had been an
accident or some new form of elephant race!
Naturally it is an impossibility for any man or set of men to maintain
an unbroken record of halting panics. Their charges are too big, too
possessed with temperament, too prone to become frightened at the most
puerile things for a keeper always to outguess them and outmaneuver
them. However, the number of panics on the part of the various elephant
herds in which damage is caused or the big brutes actually succeed in
getting away is so far over-shadowed by the attempts at revolt which
are broken up in their inception that there is not an opportunity
for comparison. Hardly a day passes among the various circuses that
at least one elephant does not decide to pit his will against that
of the man in charge. But actual panics, with consequent damage,
happen extremely seldom. In fact, strange as it may seem, the actual
breakaways of any extent in circus history are so few that they number
less than a score. When it is considered that there are fully fifty
circuses in America which possess elephants, some idea may be gained
of the efficacy of those men who manage the herds, who day after day,
outguess and outgeneral their charges--the keepers of the bulls. But
one hears little of these clashes of will. In the life of the keeper
of the bulls his failures become public property; his successes are
reflected in his pay envelope only, and the crowd often goes home
without even the thrill of knowing that an elephantine revolution was
nipped in the making.
For instance, few persons in Berkeley, California, remember an elephant
stampede in that city. The very persons who saw it probably would be
willing to take oath that nothing of the kind ever happened.
Yet there was a stampede, and one that for at least five minutes
threatened to be extremely serious.
Berkeley, in the circus dictionary, is a “rah-rah” town, a feared thing
to a menagerie department. It means a college, and the traditional
enmity that has grown up between tent shows and student bodies through
long years of fights and troubles occasioned by the overexuberance
of youth, and the disturbances that almost invariably follow the
attendance at a performance of a large body of students with their
class yells, their chain steps and snake dances. Circuses are composed
of high-strung persons who risk their lives as a part of their daily
work, and of equally high-strung horses and other animals. Disturbances
during the performances are not to their liking.
But on this particular morning in Berkeley things apparently were going
exceeding well.
The parade had started on time from the lot, and now was traversing
the longest and most crowded street of the whole route. The bands were
blaring happily. The bull section, numbering some twelve animals, was
shuffling along the asphalt in peace and contentment.
Suddenly from around a corner there swung into line with the parade a
lock-step crew of some three hundred students, their feet stamping
the pavement in unison, their lips chanting a monotonous college
song, joining the procession directly behind the bull section. The
elephant keepers spurred up their horses and attempted to stop
the demonstration. The college men simply grinned at them and
tramped steadily on. Time after time the bull-men gave warning of
what the result of the monotonous chant and still more monotonous
tramp-tramp-tramp of hundreds of stamping feet might be. The parade
marshal looked around wildly for police. They were somewhere else. He
strove to block the marching line with his horse. They circled him and
went on, still beside the shuffling bull line.
Now ears were distending. Piglike eyes were rolling in their too small
sockets. Heavy skins were beginning to wrinkle.
At last there came a call from Shorty, the head keeper, and the
elephant men gave up their task. “Don’t try to break up that line.
If they won’t stop let ’em go. These bulls’ll break at the first
rough-house. Stand by to tail ’em down!”
Into position shot the assistants, each ready to dig his spurs into
his horse at the first sign of a break. Far ahead went Shorty, taking
his position just behind the gigantic trembling Mary, bearing the Ten
Thousand Dollar Queen of the Harem at the head of the section, a harem
beauty who, incidentally, just at that moment wished she was back in
Coshocton; in fact, anywhere except in that bobbing howdah. Leader Mary
was beginning to shimmy slightly with increased fright, and her shuffle
on the hot asphalt carried a new wiggle of impending danger. Then the
marching three hundred broke into a weird class yell, and the stampede
began.
Straight forward went Leader Mary, to scrape a lion’s cage, to swerve
slightly to one side, then, with the Ten Thousand Dollar Queen of the
Harem squawking aimlessly in the howdah, to lead off in a wild scramble
straight down the street, with the rest of the herd smashing along in
her rear. Then it was that the preparations of Shorty, the keeper of
the bulls, went into execution.
At the first move of the elephant section the horses of keepers moved
also--into a furious pace, for the speed of an elephant is a deceptive
thing, and it is a good horse that can keep abreast of him, once he
unlimbers into full steam ahead. The stamping college men were left
behind now; even the front section of the parade with its suddenly
hushed band and blank-faced clowns was passed almost in an instant. Out
of them all only the Ten Thousand Dollar Queen of the Harem was left,
still bouncing in her howdah, still squealing and squawking, while,
spurs deep in their horses, the elephant men strove their best to keep
abreast of the fast-traveling bull section, echoing and reëchoing the
shout of Shorty at the head of the line:
“Hi there! Mule up! Mule up there, Mary!
Frieda--Frenchy--Sultan--tails! Tails there--tails!”
It was a double command, which traveled along the line and back again
as fast as men could voice it, the order to run, and at the same time
for each elephant to grasp the tail of the beast before him. Blocks
passed while throats grew hoarse, and while the thick-packed throngs of
the curbings stared vacuously, wondering why the circus should be in
such a hurry to get its elephants out of the line of march.
But never a warning sounded, never a hint that a panic was in progress;
only that repeated and re-repeated command:
“Tails there! Mule up, you! Tails--tails!” All of it meant an
experiment in elephant psychology, and one that had been tried many
times before. At last the command sank in. The second elephant of the
line grasped the tail of Leader Mary and continued to run. The third
elephant obeyed; the fourth, the fifth, and on through the whole
section.
But the command continued:
“Mule up there--mule up! Tails!”
Another two blocks and the command changed; more, the elephant line
obeyed. A block after that, and the whole section was peacefully
shuffling along again, simply through the fact that the frightened
beasts had been made to believe that their trainer really desired them
to run, and that in their breakaway they were merely carrying out
orders. Nor could they know that in obeying the command of tails, they
handicapped themselves so that the speed of one could be no greater
than that of another, and that as long as the leader kept to a straight
line, so must the rest.
Further, the occupation of their single-track minds in the execution of
an order which coincided with their natural tendencies had wiped out in
forgetfulness the fact that something had threatened them, and brought
to them the belief that their trainer merely was running them away from
an obnoxious thing. Therefore, when the command came to slow down they
did so in confidence, and in the assurance that any danger was over.
Many a person went that day from watching the parade, wondering perhaps
why the elephant trainer should desire to put his beasts through their
paces. But few of them realized that the little play of speed had saved
not only the circus but the downtown section of Berkeley, with its
thronged sidewalks, from disaster.
The trick works time after time; it is the stand-by of the elephant
keeper, his first hope at the beginning of a breakaway. A few years
ago, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a circus had just arrived on the
lot, with the consequent confusion of setting up, of yowling caged
animals, of lumbering, trucking wagons, and trotting ring stock as the
various elements of the show traveled into position. Standing near
the menagerie tent were two elephants, secured side by side with neck
chains, which fastened one to the other. The keeper of the herd was
within the tent, superintending the staking out of the picket line,
and leaving the two big beasts in the care of an assistant until he
should call for them. But a second later he was outside the tent and in
action. The chained bulls had lost their heads.
As usual, the most innocent thing in the world had caused it, simply
the bucking of a hippodrome, or race horse, as he had passed on the way
to the stable tents. But that had been enough, and neck and neck the
two elephants had started across the lot. A collision with a wagon,
and the assistant, clinging until this moment to a bull-hook fastened
in an elephantine ear, ceased to trouble or impede their flight. Over
went the wagon; on went the bulls. Another wagon blocked their path,
and with a side-swipe they capsized it, then swerving slightly in their
course they straddled, quite by accident, the rear of a heavy pole
wagon with their connecting chains, and began to twist madly in their
efforts to free themselves and travel onward to more destruction. But
just then a new element entered, the keeper of the bulls.
“Pick it up there!” he shouted. “Sandow! Morgan! Pick it up--pick it
up!”
It was the command to push, and without realizing that they were
yielding their freedom the elephants strained forward. A poler hurried
into position at the tongue of the wagon to guide it, while from the
rear came in ever-increasing forcefulness:
“That’s right--pick it up! Pick it up there--let’s go now--pick it up!
Morgan--Sandow! Shake a leg there--pick it up!”
The elephants picked it up. With the poler guiding the way, they took
that wagon on a half-trot across the circus lot and back again, around
the big top and up to the midway, and finally for a trip of a few
blocks down the street and return, the keeper still commanding them,
still prodding them with his bull-hook, still obsessed with the desire
that they pick it up. At last, panting and wabbly, the two recalcitrant
elephants brought the wagon back into the exact position where it had
rested at the time of their collision and were allowed to slow their
pace. A bull-hook caught in a fanlike ear.
“Now you two come over here and straighten up this damage!” commanded
the keeper, and meekly the twain obeyed, to set their trunks under
the sides of the wagons they had capsized and unprotestingly raised
them into position again. Five minutes later they were in place at the
picket line, peaceful and calm, their fright effaced, ready for the
bugle call of parade.
With it all, the life of a bull-keeper is a thing of constant gambling.
He has none of the assurances with which the performers of other
beasts are blessed; the lion or tiger trainer has his cages, and the
knowledge that even should a vicious cat escape, a bullet or two from
a heavy-calibered revolver at close range can finish him. It takes a
steel-jacketed army bullet to make an elephant even realize he’s being
shot!
More, the beasts are too big to be caged. They are too strong for
anything except a perfect network of drop-forged chains. Even then,
nothing short of a pile driver can set wood deep enough into the
ground to hold them when they really desire to run. It’s wholly a
matter of a good leader of the herd, good princesses working under
her, the hope that there are few agitators or revolutionists in the
rest of the monarchy, and a strong trust in fate and the breaks of
circumstance. For even the elephant keeper never knows what may start
his difficulties. An invasion of fleas in the sandy districts of the
West can do it; an elephant’s hide can turn a leaden revolver bullet,
but it can’t stand fleas! There’s trouble even in mosquitoes.
For the flea and the mosquito evidently have more judgment regarding
the points of vulnerability in an elephant’s hide than does a bullet.
They select the soft spots behind the ears, the eyelids and tender
mouth and flanks for their work, and once they arrive in numbers,
trouble begins. It is not at all unusual to see elephants being dosed
with flea preventives. The mosquito pest is far more rare, but at least
one runaway is chargeable to this cause.
Incidentally, the instance gave another credit mark to the career of
Old Mom, and another example of at least one elephant with common
sense. The show was making a Sunday run in Canada by which it bridged
a long expanse of territory between money-making stands, heading far
into the north of the Dominion, where few shows had exhibited and
where the natives would be glad to part with a double admission price
for the pleasure of seeing a bigger circus than usual. The run had
been preceded by several days of moist, mosquito-breeding weather,
with the result that when the show train made a feed stop at a small
prairie settlement, and the elephants were unloaded for a trip of half
a mile to the nearest water, the insects swarmed in such millions that
they almost obliterated the lettering of the railroad cars. About the
railroad tracks several hundred smudges were lighted, thus freeing that
exact territory from the pests, but the elephants weren’t fortunate.
They were forced to travel out into the country for water, and the
mosquitoes went with them.
By the time the watering process was finished every elephant was
crusted with stinging, poisonous insects and squealing with discomfort.
They pulled from their keepers; in vain Old Mom, obeying the commands
of Alispaw, strove to hold them in line. She bellowed, she butted,
she lashed with her trunk--but to no purpose. A moment more and an
inveterate agitator made the break, followed by two others, and
instantly the rest of the herd rushed after them. More, Old Mom
broke from the bull-hooked grasp of her keeper, and with Frieda, her
handmaiden, beside her, swung madly into flight also!
It seemed that at last the ability of Old Mom to command a situation
was lost. Faster and faster she went, passing the slower members of the
herd, and at last forcing her way to the very front of the stampede,
Frieda puffing along in her wake. For a full eighth of a mile she led
the rush straight out into the prairie; then the pursuers, far in the
rear, noticed that she was beginning to turn in her course. Soon she
had made a semicircle and was leading the plunging herd straight back
in the direction of the cars.
Thundering on they went, the workmen and clustered performers parting
spasmodically as they approached the runs, Old Mom still in the lead,
and heading, it seemed, on a straight path for the sleeping cars and
the crash which seemed inevitable. Once an elephant loses its head it
takes no cognizance of what may be before it; its mentality knows a
beeline only, no matter if the obstruction be a stone quarry.
Nearer, nearer! Then it suddenly became evident that Old Mom evidently
was in full possession of her faculties--and a bright idea. At the
tracks she swerved, and while horses and workmen scurried for safety,
she led the way straight to the elephant cars and climbed in!
The runs, or running board by which the beasts usually made their
entrance and exit had been removed in preparation for the switching of
the cars. So the climbing operation was a literal one. With the rest of
the bulls behind her, Old Mom, grunting and squealing, made the ascent,
and Frieda followed.
Then in the semidarkness of the smudge-filled car she trumpeted
happily, and the rest of the herd crowded in after her. A stampede of
nearly a mile was over without a cent of damage.
In fact, Old Mom, with her faith and her levelheadedness, has meant
salvation in many an instance. I once saw this sensible old elephant
lead her herd across the cable bridge which connects Wheeling,
West Virginia, with the Ohio side, with a storm in progress, the
surroundings inky black, the rain pelting, the keepers almost as
terrified as the brutes, with the beams of the bridge cracking from
overweight, and the structure itself swinging fully eight feet
from side to side! Below was a sheer drop to the Ohio River; two
elephants had become panic-stricken and had broken from the bull-man
in attendance, rushing frantically forward to the protection of their
leader. The rest of the herd had begun to mill, with only a thirty-foot
width of bridge as their arena; bull-men were befuddled and nearly
blinded by the pelting rain. Yet Old Mom held true to the commands of
her trainer, and with weird trumpetings which sounded sharp above even
the rush of wind and crackling of thunder, someway, somehow, reassured
her herd. Then with the ever-present Frieda at her side, she began to
lead the way, slow step after slow step to the opposite side.
That very slowness was the salvation of the herd; instinctively they
knew that she was testing the bridge, and by some sort of animal
understanding, did likewise. The rocking lessened. A half-hour later
Old Mom brought her charges safe out at the other side, every elephant
walking in comical, gingerly fashion for a full block after leaving
the structure, for all the world like overgrown fat boys trying to
negotiate an area of eggshells.
Yet even Mom has her failings, her likes and dislikes; and once, at
least, her discipline has ended in tragedy. Woeful is the life of the
subject elephant that defies Old Mom, ancient though she may be. Well
past the hundred-year mark in age, dependable when every other bull
of the picket line is frantic, there is one failing; Old Mom is a
disciplinarian to the point of being a martinet. More than that, she
is as foolish in her likes as a person in second childhood, and her
favorite is the worst trouble-maker of the whole herd!
Long ago they named him Billy, a quarrelsome, snobby little runt of an
elephant that spends half his time in winter quarters striving to slap
the daylights out of the hoglike old hippopotamus that wallows in his
permanent tank near the picket line, and the remainder of his existence
in stealing feed from the rest of the elephants. Nor does one of that
bull line dare to protest! Immediately there comes a squeal from Billy,
and from farther down the line a bellow of anger from Old Mom, where,
eyes glaring, trunk twisting, ears wide, she wheels forward toward
her picket pin and prepares to free herself that she may punish the
offender. For punishment is swift and sure to those who offend her by
offending her pet. Billy, to Old Mom, is a little angel. He can do no
wrong. To the rest of the herd he is an obnoxious, selfish, obtrusive
little devil that can do no right. They hate him. But they submit,
rather than feel the thump of Old Mom’s trunk, or the pile-driver
impact of her hard skull. Winter quarters or the road, it is all the
same. Old Mom has taught her little angel her secrets of escape, with
the result that he wanders the elephant line at will, in spite of
stakes, bonds or even keepers. Old Mom’s protection of Billy extends to
humans, and the runt does as he pleases.
For eight years had this continued when the tragedy came. For eight
years, Floto, the stodgiest, most amiable male member of the herd, had
submitted to every indignity one elephant can heap upon another. Billy
had stolen his feed. Billy had edged forward when visitors arrived
with peanuts, and literally taken them out of Floto’s trunk. Floto had
protested and been punished, and so Floto had endured. But during those
eight years the hatred was being stored against a day of judgment. And
near the end of the season, at Orange, Texas, it came.
The press services which carried the story of that day’s event
announced that some one had given Floto a chew of tobacco and that he
had gone mad because of it. But that was only tradition and a guess.
Floto was one of the best tobacco eaters of the picket line. And Floto
had something more on his mind than a bad taste. The story of his death
is one of rebellion and revenge.
Old Mom was out on the lot, busily pushing the wagons into position for
the loading of the night. The matinée was over. The menagerie tent
was drowsing in that calm which intervenes between the afternoon show
and the gleaming chandeliers of night. Floto was at his picket pin,
glorying in his portion of hay. Then came Billy.
He rooted in as usual and began to gobble Floto’s feed share, even as
he had done for eight years. But this time Old Mom was not there to
protect him. Floto snorted and warned the runt out of his way. But the
fat little Billy only grunted and reached for another trunkful. It was
the final insult.
A weird trumpet blast, and the three-ton Floto rose high on his
haunches. Then with a sudden thumping drop, he came to all fours again,
and seizing his piggish enemy in his trunk, raised him squealing over
his head, only to throw him, breathless, to the ground, and then,
breaking his stay chains, to leap upon his pudgy enemy before the
smaller elephant could regain his feet. A moment of mauling followed,
in which thundering hoofs knocked resistance from the fallen beast, and
then, using his head for a combination roller and battering ram, the
angered elephant scraped the body of the beleaguered animal along the
hard sandy ground until the heavy flesh was torn from the runt’s body
in great patches, and the blood flowed from fully a dozen wounds.
Animal men with bull-hooks strove futilely to pull him away. He shook
them off and began to pound the prostrate Billy with flail-like blows
of his trunk, suddenly to halt and wheel, trembling, yet defiant. Old
Mom, with Charles Churchill, her keeper, at her head, was swinging
under the side wall to restore order. But the time for that was past.
Floto was in the position of a cornered criminal. He had disobeyed
every law of the mistress of the herd, and now he defied her. He did
not even wait for Old Mom to approach him. Head lowered, trunk tightly
curled, he swung forward to the attack, butted her out of the way and
plunged through the side wall, out into the sparsely peopled circus
lot, an outlaw at last.
Wagons tumbled out of his way as he crashed into them. Ticket boxes
turned to matchwood when he caught them and crushed them with swift
stamping blows of his heavy forefeet. Ropes parted like strings before
his plowing progress. A workman crossed his path; the elephant caught
him in his trunk and threw him thirty feet into an irrigation ditch.
Back to the menagerie he went, to butt every elephant that faced him,
to overturn cages, to seize frightened, screaming ponies and break
their backs. Then they called for the rifles.
Only thirty-thirties were in the ticket wagon, equipped with leaden
bullets. But the animal men felt that enough shots from them might
suffice; at least they might be able to hold the maddened beast at
bay until a rushing automobile, already sent townwards, could return
with army rifles. Hurriedly the guns were distributed and the magazines
filled. Then as fast as hands could work the levers thirty shots were
fired at the head of the outlaw, every one striking its mark.
But the bullets did little more than pierce the heavy flesh; some of
them dropped to the ground without even breaking the thick armor of
hide that covered the elephant’s skull.
He stood and took the shots, one after another, hardly seeming to
notice their impact. Then suddenly, as though bewildered, as though
seeking a reason for it all, he whirled for a moment in aimless
circles, then headed straight for the empty big top. The bullets had
not entered the animal’s thick skull, but something akin to a thought
had. The stinging of the speeding lead in some way seemed to convey
an idea to the brute that the humans who had commanded him were now
striving to force him to do a certain thing, and in a hazy moment of
obedience he hurried to its execution as swiftly as possible, the only
thing he knew!
Into the center ring he rushed, to halt, a single elephant in the
middle of a deserted circus tent. There, alone, _sans_ the music,
_sans_ the crowds, _sans_ the brilliance and the brightness which
usually accompanied the performance, Floto the outlaw, the blood
streaming from thirty bullet holes, without guidance, without even a
cue, went through every figure of his act, while at the connections the
men of the circus stood and watched, unable to cope with him, unable
to kill him, unable to conquer him; watched while he waltzed about the
ring, while he knelt over an imaginary trainer, while he walked on his
hind hoofs; and while, with a sudden change of thought, he crashed
across the stages, tore down a section of seats, and then, bursting
through the side wall, ran for the open country.
All that night they trailed him, a trail of broken fences, of smashed
chicken yards, of wide swaths through growing crops! The next morning
they found Floto a bare half-mile from town, where he evidently was
circling back to the circus. But he still was the outlaw, still the
renegade. He sighted the armed men and trumpeted. Then with a swift
movement he turned toward a telegraph pole and wrapped his trunk
about it. There was a sharp crackle. Wires spit and sang as they
popped. Floto had snapped the pole clean at its base and, swinging
it even as an angered man would swing a club, had headed straight
toward his hunters! There they killed him, with three swift volleys of
steel-jacketed bullets, even as he charged them, Floto who had feared
discipline enough to become a renegade!
From all of which may be gathered that the life of the keeper of the
bulls is far from a bored existence.
Nor is it always a matter of a spasmodic breakaway or a single bad
animal that must be feared. There is one instance, a great many years
ago, of a herd that was incorrigible not only for a day, but a season.
But to the story: There had been a change in the men commanding the
herd, a sudden change, and one which the elephants did not like. At
least, they gave evidence of a displeasure that was not only keen but
lasting. The show, as was usual, opened its season in the Coliseum, in
Chicago, and according to the ordinary custom held its rehearsals for
three days before the beginning of the regular performance.
The day for dress rehearsal came--the final time of practice, in
which the whole show, from spectacle to races, is run through--and
twelve elephants of the herd of twenty-two, each with its heavy velvet
blankets, its trappings and its howdah, were led into position to await
the signal for entrée. Which was also the signal for trouble.
The acoustics of a building are far different from those of a tent.
The minute the band started, so did the elephants. Some arrived at
the arena by the front entrance. Some shot down the chutes into the
basement, some headed straight for the horse stalls, crippling a number
of the ring stock, and six became wedged in another chute, and for a
time threatened the safety of that portion of the building. At last
sweating, shouting bull-men corralled them and prepared for the only
possible thing,--to rehearse their charges all night if necessary to
make them ready for the next afternoon’s show.
The program was followed; dawn found the elephants still being forced
through their entrance and their tricks. But even after twelve hours of
practice only four of the big beasts were found sufficiently tractable
to risk in entrée.
Show time came, with the blankets again, the trappings and the
howdahs. The elephants made their entrance. The audience applauded
enthusiastically. All of which was another new noise to the nervous
beasts. Off went the four, heading for their picket line in the
basement, and starting a panic among the pachyderms that had been left
behind. Three hours later the tired elephant men reported peace again,
but only for a short time. The night show brought another near-panic,
and the “preposterous poundage of ponderous pachyderms” was eliminated
from the program of the circus, at least as far as the Coliseum was
concerned. In this connection, the circus man is no person to take
risks. His first thought is his audience, and when animals show signs
of incorrigibility, they are removed from performance until they have
become good again.
In the two weeks of the show’s engagement which followed, the trainers
prepared for the future. Every unusual noise, every possible thing that
might be the cause of fright on the part of the beasts, was provided
for. Horses dragging sacks were ridden up and down in front of them;
guns were fired behind them, tin cans dropped in a pile in front of
them; they were even entertained every few hours by a pair of fighting
dogs! Whenever an animal trainer thought of a noise or thing that might
frighten an elephant, the picket line immediately was introduced to it,
with trimmings.
On the last day of the engagement the trainers reported that they
believed they had made progress sufficient to allow the presentation of
one elephant act. The presentation was all. The only action was that of
the entire herd rushing wildly for that dearly beloved basement and its
comparative safety.
But now there came a new chance; the show left the indoors and went
into the open, back to the land of canvas. For three months there was
nothing more dangerous than minor fretfulness and lone recalcitrants,
and it was believed that trouble at last was over. Then, at Rawlins,
Wyoming, where the cow-puncher population of the entire surrounding
country had congregated to watch the unloading of the big circus, the
bulls were led forth as usual--and a dog fight started!
A rampage began less than a minute later. Five minutes more and the
railroad yards were filled with wandering, frightened elephants; a
passenger train was stalled at the station, the engineer fearing to
pull out lest his coaches be overturned by an elephant galumphing
forth from a hiding place behind a box car; the passenger station was
filled with refugees; and the cow-punchers were eagerly volunteering
to rope the darned critters an’ bring ’em in, draggin’ behind a saddle
pommel. More, when six of the bulls took to the open prairie the offer
was accepted--anything that looked like aid was a welcome thing to the
circus just then--and the strangest roping contest in Wyoming’s history
began. Also the greatest defeat that a bunch of Western cow-punchers
ever knew.
Not that they didn’t succeed in roping the big beasts, for they did.
But that was the end of the capture. The minute a rope settled about
an elephant’s neck the pachyderm decided to go elsewhere, taking
rope, horse and cow-puncher with him until the lariat snapped. As
a last resort some thirty of the cow hands decided upon a form of
elephant round-up, an attempt to force the elephants to submission by
the usual methods of a cattle round-up. It lasted only until the six
recalcitrants decided to move on. Whereupon they lowered their heads,
pushed the horses and riders out of the way and loped gayly forth
to new fields and broader prairies. Late that night a new relay of
cow-punchers, accompanied by a half dozen of the captured elephants
which had been thoroughly pacified, and headed by the bull-keepers,
found the truants a full twenty-five miles from town, and by mingling
them with the passive beasts finally returned them to the cars. After
which another full three weeks passed in which the elephants were
missing from performance, followed by another period of passivity.
This lasted, however, only until the show reached Bakersfield,
California, and a canvasman chased a frightened rabbit, which had
bobbed up about the show grounds, under the side walling and into
the menagerie tent. The rabbit went out the other side of the tent.
So did twelve of the parade elephants, wrecking everything from the
menagerie to the sideshow, and heading for an irrigation canal at the
other end of the lot. Here they were dragged from the water, the parade
paraphernalia muddy and ruined, and brought back to the picket line
once more, where they remained peaceful for a whole twenty-four hours.
The next day, at Santa Barbara, an agitator chirruped, the queer,
almost bird-like call which precedes a panic, and away they all went
again! Some chose town and the wrecking of fences and small buildings.
Others made the outer circle, disrupting the garden hopes of residents
for weeks to come. Two more made for the fish market and ruined it.
Another struck an automobile, wrecking it and injuring two persons.
The remaining six of the runaways, smelling the open water, made for
the bay and hopelessly mired themselves in the salt marshes, with the
result that forty horses and nearly three thousand feet of rope were
required to pull each of them from the mud.
That was too much. A few days later, at Tucson, Arizona, the bull cars
were run fifteen miles out of town, and the agitators were put to death.
All of which has its antithesis in another stampede which actually made
money. The gods sometimes favor even a keeper of the bulls, and such
was the case in the stampede of Old Mom’s herd at Idaho Falls.
The day had been hot. The elephants came out of the performing ring of
the matinée tired and “juggy,” as a bull-man terms lassitude, to be led
quite indifferently to a near-by irrigation ditch to drink. There, by
their straining against the elephant hooks, they indicated that a mere
drink would not satisfy.
“What’re we goin’ t’ do?” inquired an assistant as he scrambled at the
end of a bull-hook. “They want in an’ they’re goin’ t’ have in!”
“Hold them bulls!” came the curt reply of the keeper. “Sink that hook
deeper an’ hold them bulls.”
“What’s the matter?” It was a new voice. “They just want a swim, don’t
they?”
“Yeh.” The keeper touched his cap to the owner of the show.
“Yeh--that’s what they’re after.”
“Then why don’t you let ’em have it?”
“Afraid. Snake River’s just over this hump here, and they might make
for it. It’s deep an’ swifter’n ’ell. Been a half a dozen horses
drowned right here; nothing’s ever come out of it alive.”
“But,” argued the little owner, “that isn’t this ditch, is it? Why
should they want to go over to a river they can’t see when there’s all
this water right here?”
The keeper grinned in sickly fashion.
“You don’t know bulls. They’ll--”
“Quit your kidding. Let ’em go. The poor things are hot.”
“All right.” The keeper sighed--a sigh with a good-by in it. “You’re
boss. Hey, men! Turn ’em loose!”
There was a rush, a splash of water, then shining bulky forms that
flopped and scrambled out of the water at the other side of the
irrigation ditch. The herd, in its entirety, had smelled broader
expanses of water, and almost abreast they went for it, all but Old
Mom, who trumpeted wildly, who squealed and bellowed and roared, but
who for a moment remained alone. Even her faithful Frieda deserted
her, running wildly with Snyder and Trilby over the edge of the hump
and sliding down a declivity of solid rock into the raging waters
of the Snake River rapids. Behind them the two remaining members of
the herd halted, stood a moment in fear, then whimpering returned to
the side of Old Mom, while the circus owner, believing he had sent
a valuable elephant herd to its death, hurriedly decided to move
elsewhere than within the range of the baleful eye of the keeper of the
bulls.
Down in the rapids, with its falls and dangerous suck holes below, the
three elephants floundered a moment, then splashed out in different
directions. Frieda, her common sense aroused at last, swam with all her
strength straight for the opposite shore, finally landing in safety
just above the falls. But Trilby and Snyder, forgetting the swiftness
of the current in their enjoyment of the water’s coolness, drifted
lazily along, until too late. A moment more and the hundreds of excited
sightseers who had gathered atop the banks saw the rolling, tossing,
suddenly frantic beasts plunge, over the falls and into the suck holes
and whirlpools beneath, from which no living thing ever had emerged.
By this time the owner was far away and seeking even more speed. A man
in an automobile hastened to overtake him and to break the news that
his elephants were in the Snake River death trap. He nodded glumly and
went on.
The elephants now were in a suck hole which formed the main amusement
of the boys of the town who, when the lure of other games had faded,
were wont to push large logs over the edge into the swirling waters
and watch them churned to bits by the fierce action of the boiling
waters. Trilby had vanished. Only the edge of Snyder’s trunk showed at
long intervals. Atop the bank the keeper of the bulls breathed another
good-by to two of his best elephants.
Then a shout. Fully three hundred feet below the suck hole Trilby,
immersed for what had seemed hours, had come to the surface and was
fighting valiantly toward shore. Finally she gained it, to crawl to a
rocky ledge, to stagger, then to fall exhausted. Five minutes later
Snyder lay beside her, equally fatigued. And there they remained,
moaning with almost human intonations, until their keeper, with Old
Mom, came to their rescue.
All through the town the word spread that a living thing--two living
things, in fact--had survived the death trap. The crowds gathered;
it was as though conquering heroes had returned from a war. The
townspeople even forgave Frieda and refused damages when it was learned
that she had ambled from her landing point to a livery yard and
caused a panic among the horses stabled there. That night the tents
were unable to contain the crowds that thronged to see the elephants
which had braved the whirlpools. And in the years to come, the simple
announcement of the coming of the circus was enough to insure the
influx of thousands of dollars, as long as it contained the assurance
that the death-trap elephants would be a part of the performance.
But such a happy thing as this in the life of a bull-keeper is almost
too good to be true. In the circus world the young man seeking
adventure is never told to go West, nor to become a prospector, nor
to drive in motor-car speed events, nor to aspire to the Northwest
Mounties. It is merely suggested that if he’s really in earnest and
doesn’t care what happens, it might be a good idea to learn the
rudiments of being a keeper of the bulls. After that if he isn’t
satisfied he’s hopeless!
THE END
[Illustration]
UNDER THE BIG TOP
_By_ COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 238 pages.
“To any one who has ever thrilled over a circus, ‘Under the Big Top’
should be a joy. Mr. Cooper knows his subject. He writes of the circus,
its pageantry and its romance, its vicissitudes and its thrills, in
a vivid, most entertaining fashion.”--_“F. F. V.” in The New York
Tribune._
“Mr. Cooper gives no end of interesting information about the circus.
He has the dramatic instinct that both senses a good story and tells it
well, and so his little anecdotes are always interesting, having point,
punch, humor, pathos, human appeal.”--_The New York Times._
“There is so much genuine interest in Mr. Cooper’s book that a detailed
account of the subjects of which it treats is impossible. His book
is a compendium of information concerning a subject on which there
has always been a great amount of speculation and curiosity, and it
answers fully and completely every question that can be asked about the
circus.”--_The Philadelphia Public Ledger._
“Whenever the historian of the circus sits down to his task and squares
his elbows, he will need to have on his desk Mr. Cooper’s ‘Under the
Big Top.’ As an account of the circus as it is, here and now, it is
altogether satisfying.”--_Brander Matthews in The Literary Digest
International Book Review._
“Taken all in all, ‘Under the Big Top’ is certainly one of the most
fascinating books of the season. It is that unusual type of book that
appeals to young or old, boys and girls, men and women. It takes
us to a strange world outside our own lives and tells us about it
interestingly and truly.”--_The Detroit Saturday Night._
Boston LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY Publishers
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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