CHUNKY’S NEW TRICK
Chunky thought the circus was a very queer place. When the cage, on
wheels, in which he was kept, was drawn up for the first time on the
lot where the circus tent was pitched, the happy hippo thought he had
never before seen so many people. There was a big crowd trying to get
in the tents to look at the animals, watch the men and women ride
horses around the ring, jump from the trapezes, and see the clowns do
their funny tricks. Of course Chunky knew nothing of that. All he knew
was that he had been brought to the circus. He knew this much because
of what the elephant had said.
The circus happened to stop in the town where Chunky was being kept,
and, as they needed a hippo, one of the men who owned the circus bought
Chunky.
The circus had been traveling about from place to place, and Chunky’s
wagon, of which half was a tank containing water in which he could
float around, had been put on the car and hauled with the other circus
wagons. At first Chunky was afraid of the train of cars, but he soon
grew to like it.
So the hippo really came to the show in the middle of the season, when
it was traveling from city to city. At what was the first performance
for Chunky, his cage was wheeled into the animal tent, and placed in a
ring next to a cage of monkeys on one side and a cage with a rhinoceros
in it on the other.
“How do you do,” said Chunky, as politely as he could to the monkeys.
“Who are you?” asked one of the big monkeys.
“They call me Chunky, the happy hippo,” was the answer. “I used to live
in the jungle, but I fell into a pit and was caught, put on a ship, and
then I fell overboard into the ocean.”
“My! you’ve had a lot of adventures!” said the monkey.
“Did you say you just came from the jungle?” asked the rhinoceros.
“Well, not long ago,” answered Chunky.
“Oh, tell me about it!” begged the rhino. “I used to live in the jungle
myself, and I would like to hear about it again, though it is much
easier to live here in the circus, where you get all you want to eat.
Tell me about the jungle.”
So Chunky told about swimming in the muddy river, of the crocodile that
bit him, and how Tum Tum had pulled him out of the mud.
“Did I hear you speak of Tum Tum?” asked one of the elephants on the
other side of the animal tent.
“Yes, I met him in the jungle,” said Chunky. “He said he used to be in
a circus. Perhaps you knew him.”
“Know him? I should say I _did_!” trumpeted a large elephant. “Why, Tum
Tum used to be in this very circus! He was such a jolly fellow! We were
all sorry to see him go.”
“Who’s that you’re speaking of?” asked a bear, who came into the tent
just then. He was dressed up like a clown.
“We were speaking of Tum Tum,” said one of the elephants. “Here is a
hippo who has just joined our circus. He met Tum Tum in the jungle.”
“I have been wondering what had become of him,” went on the bear, who
had been out in the ring doing some funny tricks with a clown.
“Did you know Tum Tum?” asked Chunky.
“I should say so!” laughed the bear. “My name is Dido, and I’m a
dancer. Why, Tum Tum once saved me and some other animals from a fire
when we were shut in our cages. He opened mine and the others’, and let
us out, so we did not get burned. Tum Tum is a great elephant! He has a
book written about his adventures. And so have I!”
“So I heard,” said Chunky, and then he told more of the things that had
happened to him.
“You’ll have a book written about you before you know it,” said one of
the monkeys. “You’ve had as many adventures already as Mappo, who was
one of us once.”
“Yes, I met friends of his in the jungle,” said Chunky.
Then he and the circus animals talked for some time, discussing
together how the show moved from place to place and how the animal
cages were put on railroad cars and hauled many miles, from one big
city to another.
Out in the other tent there was music, as Chunky could hear. It was not
like the music the black Africans of the jungle made, and which Chunky
had heard when he and the other hippos ate at night near the jungle
towns. But it was music that Chunky liked.
“Well, it is time for us to go into the rings and do our tricks,” said
one of the elephants, as the men came in to lead them away.
“I wish I could do tricks outside my cage,” said Chunky.
“Can you do any tricks at all?” asked Dido, the dancing bear.
“Yes, I can open my mouth wide, and eat carrots,” said the happy hippo.
“See!” and he did his one and only trick.
“Well, that is very nice,” said Dido, “but I guess it would hardly do
for the circus ring. You have to jump through hoops, or stand on your
head or turn somersaults to get taken out to the rings or the platforms
in the big tent, where the people sit down to watch you.”
“I guess I’ll never be able to do any of those tricks,” said Chunky. “I
have only one.”
But in a few days he learned another. It happened this way.
Every circus day his wagon stood in a ring with the others in the
animal tent, and the people used to crowd about to look at him, at the
elephants, at Dido and the others. Then Chunky’s trainer, who had been
told about the mouth-opening trick, would call:
“Open, Chunky!” and open would go his big mouth.
“Oh-o-o-o-o!” all the people would cry, and one little boy said:
“I wouldn’t want to fall down _his_ throat. I’d never get up
again――never!”
“No, indeed!” said the little boy’s mother.
So Chunky did his only trick, and wished he could do more, and pretty
soon he did. One day a keeper was tossing loaves of bread to the
elephants who stood in line, that time, next to Chunky’s wagon. One of
the loaves was not thrown straight, and went toward Chunky’s cage.
Now the happy hippo happened to be hungry; so he opened his mouth as
wide as he could, as he saw the loaf of bread coming his way, and right
in it went. And Chunky chewed it with his big teeth, and it tasted very
well.
“Ha!” cried Chunky’s keeper, who had seen what happened. “If he could
do that every day it would make a good trick. I’ll try it.”
Chunky learned this trick very easily. Whenever he saw his friend, the
keeper, standing in front of the cage with a loaf of bread in his hand,
Chunky knew what was going to happen.
“Catch this now!” the keeper would cry, and, as he tossed the loaf, the
happy hippo would open his mouth as wide as ever he could, and down it
would go. Then the boys and girls in the circus tent would laugh and
clap their hands, and even the big folks would smile, for the loaf of
bread looked so small in Chunky’s big mouth.
“Now my hippo can do two tricks!” the keeper cried. “Maybe I can teach
him some others.”
But if you have ever looked at a hippo in a circus or in a menagerie,
you can easily see that they can not do very many tricks――not as many
as an elephant or a horse. But, in time, Chunky learned to lie down
and roll over outside his tank, and that was something to do. He also
learned to stand on three legs, and raise the other toward his keeper
when told to do so. Thus Chunky had four tricks he could do, and one
day the man said:
“My hippo is getting so smart I think I can take him out in the big
tent where the music is, and have him do his tricks there.”
This the man did, and Chunky was quite proud and happy. He opened his
mouth wide when his master told him to.
“Now he is smiling at you!” the keeper would say to the circus crowds,
and then the boys and girls would laugh. It seemed funny for a hippo to
smile, but that is what Chunky meant it for. He was very happy now, and
quite jolly among the other animals.
“He is almost as jolly as Tum Tum was, when he was here,” said the
rhino. “And it needs some one to keep us animals jolly. When I think of
the jungle where I used to live, I get lonesome.”
“Oh, well, the circus is a nice place!” Chunky would say, and then he
would open his big mouth and smile in such a way that all the other
animals had to laugh. So Chunky made them jolly whether they wanted to
be or not. But most of them did.
Chunky stayed with the circus for a number of years, and grew very
large and heavy, so that he weighed about five thousand pounds, or more
than two tons of coal.
[Illustration: “‘Now he is smiling at you!’”]
In fact Chunky grew too large for the circus, as he had to be carried
around in a tank wagon, and could not walk, as the elephants did, to
and from the trains. So one day Chunky was sold to a park in a big
city, and the park had a menagerie in which different animals were
kept, including some elephants, camels and giraffes.
In this park Chunky had a very fine and large cage, with a big tank at
one end. Into this he could go whenever he wanted to, and stay as long
as he liked.
Many people came to the park to see him, for he was one of the largest
hippos in the world, it was said, and people seem to like to look at
very large or very small things.
Chunky did not forget his tricks, though soon after he went to live in
the menagerie he became too heavy to stand on three legs and raise the
other. And he could hardly roll over when the keeper told him to.
But Chunky could still do his trick of catching a loaf of bread in his
mouth, and he could open his jaws as wide as ever, and the children who
came to the park to see the animals never were tired of watching the
keeper make Chunky do his two best tricks.
One day when Chunky was in the dry part of his cage, at the end where
there was no water tank, he saw a small animal run in between the
heavy iron bars――that is, an animal much smaller than he was, but
almost as large as Dido, the dancing bear, it seemed to Chunky.
“Ho! who are you that dares come into my cage without asking me?”
inquired Chunky, though he did not speak crossly. “Do you belong to the
park menagerie? If you do, you must have gotten out of your cage.”
“No, I don’t belong here,” answered the small animal. “I am Don; and
I am a dog. Once I was a runaway dog, but I am not any more. I’ve had
lots of adventures, and a book has been written about me.”
“My!” grunted Chunky. “It seems also every animal I meet has had a book
written about him or her. Well, Don, I am glad to see you.”
“Have you had any adventures?” asked Don, with a friendly bark.
“Oh, yes, many of them,” answered Chunky. “If you want to lie down on
that pile of hay, I’ll tell you about them.”
So Don lay down on the pile of hay in the cage, and Chunky told some of
his jungle adventures. And, though the happy hippo did not know it, he
was soon to have an adventure with Don.