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!