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!