WHEN THE ANIMALS ESCAPE
Perhaps at some time in your life you’ve stood in front of a lion’s
cage at a circus, watching the pacing beast within and speculating
upon what is happening in the mind of the shifting, uneasy creature
as he makes the rounds from one end of the den to the other, poking
his heavy nose against the bars, leaping upon the partition at one
end, rebounding, growling, then springing at the heavily barred,
double-locked door before taking up his pacing step once more.
Presumably it is easy to read that mind. He wants to get out. There
is murder in those deep eyes; you can see it. The gruff growl is one
of hate and malice and enmity toward all those about him, toward the
trainers with their feeding forks, toward the massing crowds flooding
through from the marquee for their look at the menagerie before
traveling on to the seats of the big show. You can see viciousness
there, and bloody desire and determination. You know that only one
thought occupies that bestial brain,—to escape those steel bars, to
break forth upon the humans he hates, to destroy, to devour.
And the only discrepancy about the meditation is the fact that you are
entirely wrong! If that lion is thinking at all, he’s wondering whether
he’s going to get a bone for breakfast the next morning, or whether it
will be lean meat. As for escaping,—why should he leave a good home and
make a lot of trouble for himself? That pacing and leaping is merely
obedience to a natural law which commands that he take a certain amount
of exercise, nothing more.
Not that jungle animals often do not commit murder when they escape.
But when this happens it usually is the result of long waiting for a
specific object. A leopard, for instance, will take its chance at death
that it may kill a trainer it hates. But ordinarily the jungle animal
that you see within a cage at a circus has no idea and no desire to
leave. If it does, it isn’t happy until it gets back into its dear old
cage once more, back home where there is safety and comfort and where
the world isn’t rough and uneven and decidedly unpleasant,—as it is
outside the bars. Queer, but it’s true; the escape of an animal about a
circus is often funnier than it is serious.
There must be a reason, and there is. The usual animal that you see
in the circus isn’t a product of the jungle. He wouldn’t recognize
his “native heath” if he should be introduced to it. His world from
cubhood has been a cage; he was born in one, he was reared in one, and
he knows absolutely nothing about the other life. He regards his cage
as his home, as his natural habitat, and is lost without it. True,
give a lion or tiger or leopard even a day in the open country, and he
will revert to type. The old instincts will come upon him, he will kill
his food in the same manner that his ancestors killed, when they were
wild, free creatures, knowing nothing else. He will become the savage
beast that his instincts command him to be. He will fall as naturally
into the stealth, the sagacity and the cunning of the jungle as though
he had been bred to that life. But he can’t do this in a few minutes.
The result is that when he does escape, through innate animal curiosity
which leads him to investigate why his cage door should be open instead
of closed, or why a lock or bar should give beneath his weight when he
leaps, he finds himself in an unkind, noisy, excited sphere full of
troubles and annoyance, and wishes that he’d never wandered from the
old fireside.
It’s a sort of animal psychology. A beast may be mean within an arena.
He may even be a killer. Yet once on the outside, he may be a poor,
befuddled thing, happy to find again the open door leading to his
cage, and glad to get away from the hurly-burly into which a misstep
of curiosity led him. His mind leads no more naturally to thoughts of
escape than it would to tatting or embroidery. If you doubt the fact,
watch closely the next time you witness a wild animal act. You will see
that the arena is of steel, that the door is safely trussed and laced
with heavy leather straps. But that the entire top of the great, metal
enclosure is covered with nothing more than a broad expanse of woven
hemp netting! And as an illustration of that little remark about the
“killer”:
One time, Ed Warner, general agent of a circus, and myself stood in
the wings of a theater in Denver. We were making the lions and tigers
of the circus pay for their winter feed by a short tour of vaudeville
performances, and out upon the stage Captain Ricardo, the trainer,
high-booted, gold-laced, was sending the tawny beasts through their
category of tricks, meanwhile keeping a weather eye trained upon a
vicious, murderous, inbred lion, whose sole desire seemed to consist
of an ambition to separate “Cap” from his internal arrangements. Day
after day, week after week, and month after month, through the summer
season of the circus they had fought and sparred, the lion snarling
and roaring on his pedestal, his claw-fringed forefeet striking out
in vicious circles as the whip of the trainer curled toward him, the
lips drawn back from the ugly, yellow teeth, the evil eyes narrowed and
squinted, his whole being one of fierce animosity toward this one hated
personage, his trainer.
The act was nearing its finish, the leaping of the hurdles by the
various trained beasts and “Cap” was putting the barricades in place.
One of them stuck; the trainer yanked at it in an effort to straighten
it and failed. With a leap, he then rushed forward to correct the
position of the hurdle, and in doing so cramped himself between the
“turntable” and the steel walls of the arena, with his back half-turned
toward the killer.
“Cap! _Cap!_ Look out!”
[Illustration: “CAP” RICHARDS, WHO FIGHTS ANIMALS FOR A LIVING. _Page
118._]
[Illustration: ONE OF THOSE PLACID UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HYNEYS.
_Page 130._]
Ed and I were shouting from the wings, regardless of what the audience
might think. For the killer had jumped from his pedestal and was
creeping forward with all the sinuosity of a snake, toward the victim
for whom he had waited. The trainer turned to find the ugly, open jaws
of the lion not three feet away!
An instantaneous action and he had drawn his revolver, with its heavily
wadded blank cartridges, sending shot after shot straight into the eyes
of the malicious beast, the powder singeing the hair of the broad,
flat forehead, the wadding stinging and disconcerting him. The lion
whirled dazedly and pawed with the pain of the attack. The instant
was enough for the trainer to jump clear and bring his bull-whip
into action, while Ed and I—it was in the days before the Eighteenth
Amendment—hurried out to get something that would put the strength back
into our knees.
A week later, we were in another theater. It was just before the
performance, and the three of us were in the trainer’s dressing room
listening to a recital by the lion-man of how he inadvertently allowed
one finger to rest too long near a lion’s mouth,—hence the missing
digit. Above us was scuffling and noise, bumping and shouts, and Warner
grunted.
“They sure make plenty of noise when they set a stage at this show
shop, don’t they?”
“You said it.”
We continued our talk, while the noise above grew greater, finally
to still. There came the sound of clanging steps on the iron
stairs leading from the stage. Then the door was thrown open, and a
belligerent stage carpenter faced the animal trainer.
“I wish you’d keep them toothless ole lions o’ yours locked up,” he
blurted. “I’ve had a helluva time with ’em!”
“You?”
“Yeh. Came on the stage just now and found three of ’em wandering
around. I gave two of ’em a kick and they jumped back in their cage,
but the third one tried to get funny with me. So I whaled the tar out
of him with a stage prop and made a cut alongside his head. Better get
up there. He’s bleedin’. But I couldn’t help it; we can’t have them
things runnin’ loose when we’re trying to set a stage.”
We went upstairs, to find, half-sitting, half-leaning against the side
of the cage, a disconsolate, amazed lion, staring dejectedly through
the bars and licking the blood which ran down his nose from a cut
just in front of one ear. He had the appearance of some one who had
encountered a very, very rough time, and who had not yet recovered from
his fright and his surprise. We simply stood and stared. It was the
inbred, the killer! Nor did we tell the stage carpenter his record.
The explanation is simple. In his cage, that lion was a bully and a
ruffian because that was his element, that his stamping ground, that
his home. But once outside, he had lost his bearing, the attack of the
stage carpenter literally had swept him from his feet, and he had
turned from a killer to a coward.
Nor is this the only instance. There is in the carnival business a
personage known as Bill Rice. Every one in the circus or carnival
business knows Bill. They don’t know his shows, for the simple reason
that he changes his mind about every season and puts out a new one.
This was one of the years when he was running a circus and, of course,
presenting each day a street parade.
Among his animals was a vicious lion. And one day as the den was being
cleaned for the parade, the animal man forgot to put into place the bar
which held tight the steel door.
The cage went out on parade. The lion began to pace its prison. A jolt,
and it struck the door. A second later, while telephone poles became
clustered with human fruit, while horses reared and plunged, while
women reached for baby buggies and hurriedly got them out of the way,
forgetting entirely the fact that the babies themselves had been placed
on the curbing, while men seized wives in their arms and hustled them
to safety, without looking to see whether they were their own wives or
the wives of some one else, the lion plumped to the pavement and stared
dizzily about him for an instant, while he tried to fathom what had
happened.
Then came panic. On all sides, including that of the lion. The cage had
gone on. The horses pulling the den immediately in the rear had engaged
in a runaway. Everywhere, people were shouting, milling, running and
climbing trees and telephone poles. The lion scrambled vaguely, made
a false start or two, whirled, then dived straight for a small negro
restaurant across the street.
The restaurant had been full when things started. But its windows
had opened automatically, through the simple method of persons going
through glass, sash and all. At the instant the lion entered the door,
a negro waiter was just arriving at one of the front tables with a
tray of food. He saw the lion. One wild toss and the leonine beast
found himself in the midst of a shower of soup, ham bones, chitlins and
whatnot, while the waiter, screaming, made for the kitchen.
It was a bit disconcerting. For one excited, panicky second the lion
fought the clattering dishes, clawing at them and biting vaguely at
the atmosphere. Then stung by hot soup, half blinded by the pounding
of crockery as it descended upon his eye and skull bones, he leaped at
random and ran for a new place of hiding. And his path led toward the
kitchen also!
The chef went out a window. Also the waiter. The dishwasher, deafened
by the clattering of the crockery which he was massaging, had not
received the warning in time to avail himself of a method of exit. He
turned, saw a lion entering his domain, and did the only natural thing,
opened a small door leading to the drain pipes beneath the sink, and
dived in. Just then, some excited person appeared in the front of the
restaurant with a shotgun, and fired.
The charge went wild except for a few shots which did no more than
sting the lion’s hide, but the noise was enough. Befuddled, bewildered,
in the midst of a strange world and a conglomeration of annoying
surroundings, the beast leaped again and sought retreat.
Happiness! A hole! Something to crawl into, some place where he might
hide! It was the opening beneath the sink. And there the animal men
of the circus found them, a fear-whitened, speechless negro, and an
amazement-stricken lion, wedged in together, side by side, and neither
making the first move to come out. The lion didn’t want to. He was safe
in a hole. The negro dishwasher couldn’t. Even after the lion had been
lassoed, pulled forth and dragged like some great, shaggy, recalcitrant
dog into a shifting den, the dishwasher could do nothing but gasp and
sit there beneath the sink. And between the two the lion was perhaps
the more frightened!
Talk to the animal trainer, and he will tell you that as a rule it
is not the maliciousness of an escaped animal which causes trouble.
It’s the panic of the crowd about him and the fright of the animal
himself. The fear in a beast’s mind when he suddenly becomes free is
all pervading. He does not know that every one else is afraid of him;
he believes that he is in a world surrounded by enemies, that the
safety of the cage has vanished, and that he must fight—if fight there
be—for his very existence. It was during such a case as this that a
tiger which escaped from a circus at Twin Falls, Idaho, a number of
years ago, killed a child, and was in turn killed by Frank Tammen, the
manager of the show, with a revolver. In his native state, a revolver
shot would mean nothing to an eight-foot, four-hundred-pound tiger. It
would simply bring a charge and the death of the hunter. But in the
circus, the tiger was killed simply because he was out of his element,
he was frightened, dazed, and he had not been loose sufficiently long
to gain the natural savagery which time would bring him by the sheer
command of instinct.
In fact, panic is the ruling power of the suddenly loosed animal. In
elephants this is almost invariably true. Yet in spite of it, there
is always an indication that the ruling sense of humor which appears
always to be present in the elephantine mind, is there even in the
frenzy of flight. And when the elephants break loose, there is this to
remember: keep out of the way! For an elephant does not know how to
go around anything. His ideas run along straight lines, and his paths
follow his ideas.
In Winnipeg, for instance, several years ago, a circus was showing on
the fair grounds. A severe storm came up, and the elephants became
frightened. They decided to run, the whole herd of them, and some
thirty tons of elephantine flesh suddenly broke loose and headed for
new and open fields where there was no thunder, no lightning and no
wind.
Before them was one of the buildings of the fair association. It was
a solid structure, built to stand year after year. At least, that was
the idea in the minds of those who had erected it. But the path of the
escaping pachyderms was on a line that included the building! The head
of the herd, leading the chase, could have turned to the right some
fifty or seventy-five feet and gone on without an obstruction. Was it
done? It was not. A building showed ahead of her; she lowered her head,
and hunching her shoulders, went on. A crash, the splintering of wood,
the flying dust of mortar and the clattering of brick. Where the wall
had been was now a hole, with the rear end of an elephant disappearing
within, followed closely by the rest of the thundering herd, each one
taking out a bit more as it went through.
The other side—and a repetition. When the runaway was over, the
building contained a perfect tunnel. As for the elephants, they ran
until they became tired, breaking down a few fences and wooden sheds
and other inconsequential impediments which had arisen in their path;
then they stopped at a haystack and gorged themselves until the
trainers arrived, gave them all a good berating and hustled them back
to the show again.
The same was true in Riverside, California. There it was the same
herd, led by the same old elephant, old enough, one would think, to
have better sense, since one hundred and twenty-five circus seasons
had passed since she was a bouncing baby of some three hundred pounds.
This time Old Mamma led the way through a barber shop, taking with her,
draped over her shoulders, the mug rack which hung at one end, and
distributing along the street the vari-colored shaving-soap receptacles
with their gaudy lettering and resplendent flowers, while the rest of
the herd, trumpeting and bellowing, clattered along in the rear. From
there the course led down the street, where, a bit tired, Mamma stopped
at a fruit stand, the rest of the herd nudging up beside her, while the
proprietors yelled for the police,—and departed.
The oranges and apples were great. Mamma enjoyed ’em. Also Alice and
Floto and Frieda and the rest of the bulky runaways. In the rear the
crowd, recovering a bit from its fright, began to close in. Just
then, however, Mamma happened to notice that within the store hung a
beautiful bunch of bananas. So she went in, taking the door with her.
After that a new panic, for the floor was breaking, and an elephant
hates an unsound footing. So she and the rest of the herd went out
again,—through the wall on the other side!
Once more a runaway, which led to the free and open country. An hour
or so of wandering about. Then the herd grew tired. Back into town it
came, and a few minutes later, a yelping livery stable owner scurried
down the street with the announcement that his place of business had
just been visited by a flock of elephants that was eating up everything
in the barn!
There the animal men found them, peaceable, glad to obey their
commands, happy and squealing and grunting as they answered the shout
of “mule up” and trudged back once more to the circus. And the animal
men will tell you that when the elephants dropped in at that livery
stable they were doing their pachydermic best to get back to the show.
They were through with their panic, they realized that they were lost,
and they had but one thing to guide them,—the smell of fresh hay which
would indicate to them the menagerie. They found that odor in a livery
stable, and there they stopped. It wasn’t exactly home, but it was a
good substitute.
It is indeed seldom that the escape of any animal in a circus is a
premeditated thing. The accidental opening of a door, the breaking of
bars, or a wreck of some sort is the thing which usually leads to the
cry “Th’ lions is loose!” or the scurrying of a wild beast through the
menagerie. But premeditated escapes have happened, and among them is
the story of Fuller, a gigantic black-faced chimpanzee, whose mind,
according to the scientists, was but a few notches below that of the
human.
Fuller once had been the pet of a Pasadena millionaire and had
been allowed to run loose about the estate. However, that brought
complications. Residents of the neighborhood began to complain that
their houses were being burglarized, ice boxes robbed, and in one
instance an elderly man who affected a silk hat, Prince Albert and
cane, investigated a noise in the hallway to find a six-foot chimpanzee
just making his exit with his cane in one hand and the silk topper
slanted over one eye. Then Fuller began to invite himself to breakfast
rooms, even bedrooms, loping in the windows at inopportune times and
causing everything from hysteria to riot calls, with the result that he
ceased to be a pampered pet and became a circus exhibit. And there, for
the first time, Fuller found out what it meant to hate. Not a hundred
feet away, in the winter quarters, was the elephant line and that, to
Fuller, meant trouble.
The elephant and the chimpanzee are natural enemies. That enmity came
into being in the circus winter quarters, and the gigantic Fuller spent
most of his time sitting crouched in his cage, grimacing and yowling
at the hulking beasts, even repeating one of his tricks of other
days,—that of wiggling his fingers at his nose. Day after day he worked
at his chains, loosing them, only to have them replaced by the animal
men. Then one night the telephone in the winter home of Henry Boucher,
head animal trainer of the circus, whirred viciously. He answered to
find the night watchman at the other end of the line:
“Get over here as quick as you can!” came the excited message.
“Fuller’s loose and he’s whipping all the elephants! They’re about to
bust through the building. Hurry!”
Boucher hurried,—to find that the watchman’s report had been correct.
The herd had broken loose from its picket pins and was crowded in one
corner of the building, milling and trumpeting. Only one elephant still
was showing fight, a great tusker, and he was about ready to quit. His
rushes had availed him nothing; Fuller merely ducked out of the way,
and chattering, returned to the attack. The long, heavy tusks had been
useless. Their thrusts struck only air as Fuller dodged them. The great
blows of the forefeet, aimed at Fuller, had hit nothingness. The sweep
of the heavy trunk had inevitably been met by the chimpanzee, who
grasped it with his great hands as it circled toward him, then swung
upon it until it had lost the force of the blow. Without inflicting a
single injury, Fuller had won a “moral” victory simply by tantalizing
the great beasts until their frenzy had reached the point of panic. And
then Boucher approached him.
A kick, a cuff and a few cusswords. Fuller—his weight was close to
two hundred and fifty pounds, and the strength of his great shoulders
sufficient to tear a man limb from limb—merely squealed, raised one
arm in front of his face like a child afraid of a slapping, then, in
obedience to the command, trundled back to his cage. He had achieved
his aim. He had wanted to whip those elephants, and he had done it. The
object accomplished, he went back to captivity in peace.
But things do not always end as amiably when the circus animals get
loose. As is the case with disease, the complications following the
escape of jungle beasts often causes more excitement than the escape
itself. To wit, the story of Bad Axe, Michigan, and an “escape yarn”
that has become laughing history in circusdom. The recital requires a
bit of an introduction.
Kaiser and Sultan, two of the lions of the show, were a bit different
from the usual run of beasts, inasmuch as they had been led about as
pets until almost the last possible moment when their catlike natures
could be trusted. Strange as it may be, this often leads to bad temper
when the beasts have reached the adult age, and certainly in the case
of the two lions, there was little of fear and little of bewilderment
when an animal man inadvertently left open a door of their cage and
allowed them to wander forth.
The show at this time possessed what it once had believed to be a
wonderful feature,—the result of a government experiment which had
resulted in the cross-breeding of a Grevy’s zebra, from Africa, and a
Rocky Mountain “Canary”, or burro, from Colorado. The result had been
a strange and fearsome beast, possessing the striped body of a zebra,
the uncertainty, the viciousness, the meanness and wildness of a jungle
animal, combined with the head of a Missouri mule and all that goes
with that contrary creature. Long months had been spent in training the
things, with the result that they did wonderfully well in rehearsals,
and the opposite during the performances. It was nothing at all for the
“Five United States Government Hyneys” as they were called, to enter
the show tent at a trot,—and keep on trotting. You could find Hyneys
scattered all about the circus grounds—and about the town for that
matter—trampling gardens, eating up flower beds, kicking the stuffing
out of poor, innocent country horses who didn’t know enough to kick
back, running up damage suits, attachments and causing trouble in
general for the circus fixer. It was a dull week indeed when the Hyneys
didn’t run away at least three times. Often they batted a thousand by
pulling a runaway once a day. The result of which was a change in the
circus program, from a glowing announcement of these wonderful beasts
and the astonishing category of tricks which they had mastered, to the
simple announcement:
THE FIVE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HYNEYS
WILL NOW PROCEED
TO DO AS THEY PLEASE!
Which they did. And which leads to the opening of the drama of Bad Axe,
Michigan. It all happened before the show. The parade had just returned
to the lot, the cages had been “spotted” in their regular places in
the menagerie, and in the big top, or main tent, the canvas men, the
roughnecks, the seat and plank men, the property men and “punks” were
busily engaged in putting on the final touches before the opening of
the doors for the matinée performance.
Everywhere was the well-greased, smooth-working activity of a circus in
its final moment of preparation. From the padroom, a “pony punk” was
leading the five recalcitrant Hyneys back to the menagerie from a short
and eventful runaway. At one of the forward center poles, “Cow”, an
assistant boss canvas man, was holding an iron stake which “Fullhouse”,
a workman, was about to pound into the ground with a sixteen-pound
sledge. Everything was traveling along smoothly, beautifully. Then
a streaking figure shot from the “connection” or entrance to the
menagerie, his arms waving, his eyes wild.
“F’r Gawd’s sake, run!” he yelled. “Th’ lions is loose! They’re right
behind me!”
And they were,—Sultan and Kaiser, entering on a trot, perfectly
composed through the experience of others days when they had been
led about at the end of a leash as cubs, and looking for trouble.
The center poles became alive with property men and seat-workers.
Two-hundred-pound “Fat”, a plank man, made a three-foot leap for a
trapeze tape and clambered up it in a far more agile manner than the
acrobat himself could have done. Fullhouse dropped his sledge and
ran a half mile to a tree where he was found roosting an hour later.
“Cow”, still holding his iron stake, looked around somewhat hazily, saw
Sultan only a few feet away, swung high the stake, walloped the lion
in the forehead, knocked him flat and all but unconscious, then did
a bit of running himself. Just then Kaiser saw the Hyneys with their
zebra stripes, and a new angle of activity started. The zebra forms the
lion’s natural meat in the wild state.
It all seemed to come back to Kaiser,—the old call of the veldt. He
roared, with a note strange to the circus menagerie. Then he leaped,
claws extended, mouth wide, straight for the rumps of the nearest Hyney.
But that was all. Out came vicious heels that caught the beast in the
chest and knocked him back. He came on once more, only to find the
world filled with kicking, sharp hoofs that battled him in the face
and head and chest, that knocked the wind out of his lungs, that cut
and whanged and battered him until at last, whimpering and bleeding,
he turned and sought flight, the animal men after him, leaving behind
a mulish, contrary creature that allowed his ears to go flat, and his
raucous voice to raise in a long hee-haw of victory.
One lion was blinking in the daze of returning consciousness, the other
was whipped and cowering in a clump of brush near the tent. Both of
them were more than willing to quit. But the excitement still went on,
for the elephants had decided to become panic-stricken.
The lions had passed the elephant line before the hulking beasts seemed
to realize that the right and proper thing for an occasion like this
should be a runaway. Whereupon the head of the herd emitted a bellow
of excitement, pulled her stake from the ground, and made a hole in
the side wall of the tent for the general exodus. One by one the big
creatures ambled forth, squealing and trumpeting, the noise of their
exit calling a small contingent of the animal men from the primary
business of catching lions. Only one arrived in time, Boucher, the
menagerie superintendent, and he got there just as the rear of the last
elephant was disappearing.
A leap and he caught the hulking, squealing beast by its piglike
tail and sought to run along behind it until his shouts could bring
the head of the herd to her senses. He was wrong. The elephant herd
merely rounded into express-train speed and kept going, while Boucher,
his feet touching the ground once in a while, still clung to the
last elephant’s tail and yelled himself hoarse, in vain. Then—more
complications!
An eight-horse team, harnessed to an empty pole wagon, was just
crossing the lot, quietly, peaceably, without any knowledge of what
had gone on in the tent. Then came the elephants! Swarms of elephants,
trumpeting, squealing, and thundering, as they came up from behind,
alongside the wagon and its eight horses. It was too much. The driver
pulled and tugged his best. It was useless. The horses, all eight of
them, with the pole wagon clattering along behind, ran away also. Their
idea was to evade the elephants. The result was that they stayed side
by side, neither gaining on the other, while in the rear, Boucher still
hung to an elephant’s tail.
Half across the lot and another element entered,—a man in an
automobile. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a world full of
elephants and horses, all coming toward him at once. So he decided
to move faster than they. He didn’t. Just as his machine got into
its speed on the rough, rutty ground, the elephants and horses came
alongside.
And side by side the race began, the queerest race, so circus men say,
in history,—a herd of elephants, an eight-horse team attached to a
wagon, and a human being in an automobile. The elephants bellowed. The
horses did all but scream. The man on the pole wagon yelled, and so did
Boucher and the driver of the automobile.
Just before them stood the cook house. The automobile, under the
guidance of a human being, ran halfway through the tent before it could
be stopped. The elephants slid on their haunches and decided to quit.
The horses, with a sudden swerve, ran around the end and finally came
to a halt. The race was over. And the queer part of it all was that by
this time the lions were back in their cages, both of them whipped to a
standstill, and both of them glad to be home again where there were no
hoofs or iron bars, and where life ran on the level!
And so goes the usual animal escape. There is often more to cause
laughter than tragedy. For it is the good luck of the circus that most
escapes happen when the tent is empty, during the cleaning time of the
cages, or during a storm when the performance has been abandoned. And
it is seldom that the audience itself suffers as a result. There have
even been cases where animals have escaped during the performance of
a circus and been recaptured, without a person in the great throng
knowing anything of the occurrence!