squarely on the shoulder and sent him plunging to the floor in the
stall corner nearest him. Then, instantly he wheeled about and
started to follow up his attack. In the fall Thuman's hook flew
from his hand.
At first Gunda tried to step on him, but he lay so close into the
corner that the elephant could not plant his feet so that they
would do execution. Then he tried to kneel upon the keeper, with
the same result.
Thuman struggled more closely into the corner, and tried hard to
pull himself into the refuse box, through its low door; but with
his trunk Gunda caught him by a leg and dragged him back. Then he
made a fierce downward thrust with his tusks, which were nearly
four feet long, to transfix his intended victim.
His left tusk struck the steel-clad wall and shattered into
fragments, half way up. The resounding crash of that breaking tusk
was what saved Thuman's life.
Gunda thrust again and again with his sound tusk, with the
terrified and despairing keeper trying to cling to the broken tusk
and save himself. At last the point of the sound tusk drove full
and fair through the flat of Thuman's left thigh, as he lay, and
stopped against the concrete floor.
Experienced animal men always are listening for sounds of trouble.
In the cage of Alice, three cages and a vestibule distant, Keeper
Dick Richards was busily working, when he heard the peculiar crash
of that shattered tusk. "What's all that!" said he; and "That's
some trouble," was his own answer.
Grabbing his pitchfork he shot out of that cage, ran down the
keeper's passage and in about ten seconds' arrived in front of
Gunda's cage. And there was Gunda, killing Walter Thuman.
Richards darted in between the widely-separated front bars, gave a
wild yell, and with a fierce thrust drove all the tines of his
pitchfork into Gunda's unprotected hind-quarters, where the skin
was thin and vulnerable.
With a shrill trumpet scream of pain and rage, Gunda whirled away
from Thuman, bolted through the door, and rushed madly into his
yard.
Keeper Thuman survived, and his recovery was presently
accomplished. When I first called to see him he begged me not to
kill Gunda for what he had done, or tried to do. In due course
Thuman got well, and again took charge of Gunda; but after that
the elephant was not afraid of him. We adopted a policy which
prevented further accidents, but finally Gunda became a hopeless
case of sexual insanity and lust for murder.
When Gunda became most dangerous, we protected our keepers by
chaining his feet, and keeping the men out of the reach of his
trunk. Because of this, his fury was boundless; and as soon as it
was apparent that he was suffering from his confinement and never
would be any better, we quickly decided to end it all. He was
painlessly put to death, by Mr. Carl E. Akeley, with a single .26
calibre bullet very skilfully sent through the elephant's brain.
_Chimpanzees and Orang-Utans_ attack and fight men just as
they attack each other,--by biting the face and neck, and the
hands, shoulders and arms. The fighting ape always reaches out,
seizes the arm or wrist of the person to be harmed, drags it up to
his mouth and bites savagely. As a home illustration of this
method of attack, a chimpanzee named Chico in the Central Park
Menagerie once bit a finger from the hand of his keeper. In April,
1921, Mr. Ellis Joseph, the animal dealer, was very severely
bitten on his face and neck by his own chimpanzee, so much so in
fact that eighteen stitches were required to sew up his
lacerations.
One excellent thing about the manners of chimpanzees and orang-
utans in captivity and on the stage is that they do not turn
deadly dangerous all in a moment, as do bears and elephants, and
occasionally deer. The ape who is falling from grace goes
gradually, and gives warning signs that wise men recognize. They
first become strong and boisterous, then they playfully resist and
defy the keeper's restraining hand. Next in order they openly
become angry at their keepers over trifles, and bristle up, stamp
on the floor and savagely yell. It is then that the whip and the
stick become not only useless but dangerous to the user, and must
be discarded. It is then that new defensive tactics must be
inaugurated, and the keeper must see to it that the big and
dangerous ape gets no advantage. This means the exercise of good
strategy, and very careful management in cage-cleaning. It calls
for two cages for each dangerous ape.
There is only one thing in this world of which our three big
chimps are thoroughly afraid, and that is an absurd little _toy
gun_ that cost about fifty cents, and looks it. No matter how
bad Boma may be acting, if Keeper Palmer says in a sharp tone,
"_Where's that gun!_" Boma hearkens and stops short, and if
the "gun" is shown in front of his cage he flies in terror to the
top of his second balcony, and cowers in a corner.
Why are those powerful and dangerous apes afraid of that absurd
toy? I do not know. Perhaps the answer is--instinct; but if so,
how was it acquired? The natives of the chimp country do not have
many firearms, and the white man's guns have been seen and heard
by not more than one out of every thousand of that chimp
population.
Baboons Throw Stones. So far as we are aware, baboons are the only
members of the Order Primates who ever deliberately throw
missiles as means of offense. In 1922 there was in the New York
Zoological Park a savage and aggressive Rhodesian baboon
(_Choiropithecus rhodesiae,_ Haagner) which throws stones at
people whenever he can get hold of such missiles. We have seen him
set up against Keeper Palmer and Curator Ditmars a really vigorous
bombardment with stones and coal that had been supplied him. His
throw was by means of a vigorous underhand pitch, and but for the
intervening bars he would have done very good execution.
Keeper Rawlinson, of the Primate House, who was in the Boer War,
states that on one occasion when his company was deploying along
the steep side of a rock-covered kopje a troop of baboons above
them rolled and threw so many stones down at the men that finally
two machine guns were let loose on the savage beasts to disperse
them.
THE CURTAIN
On one side of the heights above the River of Life stand the men
of this little world,--the fully developed, the underdone, and
the unbaked, in one struggling, seething mass. On the other side,
and on a level but one step lower down, stands the vanguard of the
long procession of "Lower" Animals, led by the chimpanzee, the
orang and the gorilla. The natural bridge that _almost_ spans
the chasm lacks only the keystone of the arch.
Give the apes just one thing,--_speech,_--and the bridge is
closed!
Take away from a child its sight, speech and hearing, and the
whole world is a mystery, which only the hardest toil of science
and education ever can reveal. Give back hearing and sight,
without speech, and even then the world is only half available.
Give a chimpanzee articulate expression and language, and no one
could fix a limit to his progress.
Take away from a man the use of one lobe of his brain, and he is
rendered speechless.
The great Apes have travelled up the River of Life on the opposite
side from Man, but they are only one lap behind him. Let us not
deceive ourselves about that. Remember that truth is inexorable in
its demands to be heard.
We need not rack our poor, finite minds over the final problem of
evolution, or the final destiny of Man and Ape. We cannot prove
anything beyond what we see. We do not know, and we never can
know, whether the chimpanzee has a "soul" or not; and we cannot
_prove_ that the soul of man is immortal. If man possesses a
soul of lofty stature, why not a soul of lowly stature for the
chimpanzee?
We do not know just _where_ "heaven" is; and we cannot know
until we find it. But what does it all matter on earth, if we keep
to the straight path, and rest our faith upon the Great Unseen
Power that we call God?
Said the great Poet of Nature in his ode "To a Waterfowl:"
"He who from zone to zone
Guides through the boundless
Sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread
alone Will lead my steps aright."
CURTAIN.
BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY
THE MINDS AND MANNERS OF WILD ANIMALS
CAMP FIRES ON DESERT AND LAVA
CAMP FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES
TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING
TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE The Experiences of a Hunter and Naturalist
in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and Borneo. Illustrated. 8 vo.
THE AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY A Foundation of Useful Knowledge of
the Higher Animals of North America. Four Crown Octavo Volumes,
Illustrated in colors and half-tones.
THE SAME Royal 8 vo. Complete in one volume.
OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE Its Extermination and Preservation.