METHODS OF LION-TAMERS AND THE STORY OF BRUTUS'S ATTACK ON MR. BOSTOCK
THE wild-beast tamer as generally pictured is a mysterious person who stalks about sternly in high boots and possesses a remarkable power of the eye that makes lions and tigers quail at his look and shrink away. He rules by fear, and the crack of his whip is supposed to bring memories of torturing points and red-hot irons.
Such is the story-book lion-tamer, and I may as well say at once that outside of story-books he has small existence. There is scarcely any truth in this theory of hate for hate and conquest by fear. It is no more fear that makes a lion walk on a ball than it is fear that makes a horse pull a wagon. It is habit. The lion is perfectly willing to walk on the ball, and he has reached that mind, not by cruel treatment, but by force of his trainer's patience and kindness and superior intelligence.
BEGINNING THE TRAINING.
Of course a wild-beast tamer should have a quick eye and a delicate sense of hearing, so that he may be warned of a sudden spring at him or a rush from behind; and it is important that he be a sober man, for alcohol breaks the nerve or gives a false courage worse than folly: but the quality on which he must chiefly rely and which alone can make him a great tamer—not a second-rate bungler—is a genuine fondness for his animals. This does not mean that the animals will necessarily be fond of the tamer; some will be fond of him, some will be indifferent to him, some will fear and hate him. Nor will the tamer's fondness protect him from fang and claw. We shall see that there is danger always, accident often, but without the fondness there would be greater danger and more frequent accident. A fondness for lions and tigers gives sympathy for them, sympathy gives understanding of them, and understanding gives mastery of them, or as much mastery as is possible. What but this fondness would keep a tamer constantly with his animals, not only in the public show (the easiest part), but in the dens and treacherous runway, in the strange night hours, in the early morning romp, when no one is looking, when there is no reason for being with them except the tamer's own joy in it?
I do not purpose now to present in detail the methods of taming wild beasts; rather what happens after they are tamed: but I may say that a lion-tamer always begins by spending weeks or months in gaining a new animal's confidence. Day after day he will stand for a long time outside the cage, merely looking at the lion, talking to him, impressing upon the beast a general familiarity with his voice and person. And each time, as he goes away, he is careful to toss in a piece of meat as a pleasant memento of his visit.
COMING TO CLOSE QUARTERS.
Later he ventures inside the bars, carrying some simple weapon—a whip, a rod, perhaps a broom, which is more formidable than might be supposed, through the jab of its sharp bristles. One tamer used a common chair with much success against unbroken lions. If the creature came at him, there were the four legs in his face; and soon the chair came to represent boundless power to that ignorant lion. He feared it and hated it, as was seen on one occasion when the tamer left it in the cage and the lion promptly tore it into splinters.
THE LION DESTROYS THE CHAIR.
Days may pass before the lion will let his tamer do more than merely stay inside the cage at a distance. Very well; the tamer stays there. He waits hour after hour, week after week, until a time comes when the lion will let him move nearer, will permit the touch of his hand, will come forward for a piece of meat, and at last treat him like a friend, so that finally he may sit there quite at ease, and even read his newspaper, as one man did.
Lastly begins the practice of tricks: the lion must spring to a pedestal and be fed; he must jump from one pedestal to another and be fed, must keep a certain pose and be fed. A bit of meat is always the final argument, and the tamer wins (if he wins at all, for sometimes he fails) by patience and kindness.
"There is no use getting angry with a lion," said a well-known tamer to me, "and there is no use in carrying a revolver. If you shoot a lion or injure him with any weapon, it is your loss, for you must buy another lion, and the chances are that he will kill you, anyway, if he starts to do it. The thing is to keep him from starting."
I once had a talk with the lion-tamer Philadelphia on the subject of breaking lions, and heard from him what need a tamer has of patience. "I have sat in a lion's cage," said Philadelphia, "two or three hours every day for weeks, yes, for months, waiting for him to come out of his sulky corner and take a piece of meat from me. And that was only a start toward the mastery."
"Wouldn't he attack you?"
Philadelphia smiled. "He did at first, but that was soon settled. It isn't hard to best a lion if you go at it right. I usually carry a pair of clubs. Some men prefer a broom, because the bristles do great work in a lion's face, without injuring him. But the finest weapon you can use against a fighting lion is a hose of water. That stops his fight, only you mustn't have the water too cold, or he may get pneumonia. You mightn't think it, but lions are very delicate. In using the clubs, you must be careful not to strike 'em hard across the back. You'd be surprised to know how easy it is to break a lion's backbone, especially if it's a young lion."
THE TAMER'S TRIUMPH. READING HIS NEWSPAPER IN THE LION'S CAGE.
In support of this statement that lions are delicate, I remember hearing old John Smith, director of the Central Park Menagerie, set forth a list of lions' ailments, and the coddling and doctoring they require. Lion medicine is usually administered in the food or drink, but there are cases requiring more heroic measures, and then the animal must be bound down before the doctors can treat him. It should be remembered that lions in city menageries are more dangerous than circus lions, since they are either wild ones brought straight from the jungle and never tamed or rebellious ones, anarchist lions that have turned against their tamers, perhaps killed them, and have finally been sold to any zoölogical garden that would take them.
"When we have to rope a lion down to doctor him," said Smith, "we drop nooses through the top bars and catch his four legs, and let down one around his body. Then we haul these fast, and there you are. You can feel his pulse or give him stuff or pull out one of his teeth or anything."
"It must be pretty hard to pull a lion's tooth," I remarked.
"Not very. Here's the forceps I use; you see it isn't very big. This is for the upper jaw, and that other one is for the lower jaw."
I made some remark, meant to be facetious, about not giving lions gas, but the old man took me up sharply. "Certainly we give 'em gas. How else in the world do you think we operate on 'em? They get chloroform same as a person. I have a bag for it that fits over a lion's head, and pulls up tight with a string. In the bag is a sponge saturated with chloroform, and the first you know off goes Mr. Lion into quiet sleep, and you can do what you like with him. But you have to be mighty careful not to give him too much, and look sharp at his heart action, or you'll have a dead lion on your hands. Say, I've found out one thing chloroforming lions that lots of doctors don't know. It's this, that if a lion comes back hard to consciousness after you've put him to sleep, you can help things along by catching hold of his tail and heaving him up on his head. That sends the blood down to his brain, where you want it, and pretty soon you'll see his muscles begin to twitch, and back he comes. I told a doctor about this once, and he said he'd done the very same thing with patients."
Coming again to the need of patience, let me quote my friend "Bill" Newman. "Why," said he, "I've spent weeks and weeks teaching an elephant to ring a bell—just that one thing. You have to sit by him hour after hour, giving him the bell in his trunk and giving it to him again when he drops it, and then again and again for a whole morning, and then for many mornings until he gets the idea and rings it right. It's the same way teaching an elephant to fan himself or teaching tricks to a clown elephant; you have to wait and wait, and never give up. Once an elephant understands what you want he'll do it, but it's awful hard sometimes making 'em understand."
"How do you teach them to stand on their heads and on their hind legs?" I asked.
"With the same kind of patience and with tackle. Just heave 'em up or roll 'em over the way they're supposed to go and then keep at it. Some learn quicker than others. Once in a while you get a mean one, and then look out."
An instance of the affection felt for wild beasts by their tamers is offered in the case of Madame Bianca, the French tamer, who in the winter of 1900 was with the Bostock Wild Animal Show giving daily exhibitions in Baltimore, where her skill and daring with lions and tigers earned wide admiration. It will be remembered how fire descended suddenly on this menagerie one night and destroyed the animals amid fearful scenes. And in the morning Bianca stood in the ruins and looked upon the charred bodies of her pets. Had she lost her dearest friends, she could scarcely have shown deeper grief. She was in despair, and declared that she would never tame another group; she would leave the show business. And when the menagerie was stocked afresh with lions and tigers Bianca would not go near their cages. These were lions indeed, but not her lions, and she shook her head and mourned for "Bowzer," the handsomest lioness in captivity, and "Spitfire," and "Juliette," and the black-maned "Brutus."
This recalls a story that Mr. Bostock told me, showing how Bianca's fondness for her lions persisted even in the face of fierce attack. It was in Kansas City, and for some days Spitfire had been working badly, so that on this particular afternoon Bianca had spent two hours in the big exhibition cage trying to get the lioness into good form. But Spitfire remained sullen and refused to do one perfectly easy thing, a jump over a pedestal.
"Ask Mr. Bostock to please come here," called Bianca, finally, quite at her wit's end, with the performance hour approaching and hers the chief act. To go on with Spitfire in rebellion would never do, for the spirit of mischief spreads among lions and tigers exactly as it spreads among children. Spitfire must jump over that pedestal.
Mr. Bostock arrived presently, and at once entered the cage, carrying two whips, as is the custom. There is something in this man that impresses animals and tamers alike. It is not only that he is big and strong, and loves his animals, and does not fear them; that would scarcely account for his extraordinary prestige, which is his rather because he knows lions and tigers as only a man can who has literally spent his life with them. From father and grandfather he has inherited precious and unusual lore of the cages. He was born in a menagerie, he married the daughter of a menagerie owner, he sleeps always within a few feet of the dens, he eats with roars of lions in his ears. And his principle is, and always has been, that he will enter any cage at any time if a real need calls him—which has led to many a situation like that created now by Spitfire's disobedience.
There were many groups in the menagerie at this time, each with its regular tamer; and while Bostock, as owner and director, watched over all of them, it often happened that months would pass without his putting foot inside this or that particular cage. And in the present case he was practically a stranger to the four lions and the tiger now ranged around on their pedestals in a semi-circle thirty feet in diameter, with big Brutus in the middle and snarling Spitfire at one end.
"Well," said Mr. Bostock, explaining what happened, "I saw that Bianca had made a mistake in handling Spitfire from too great a distance. She had stood about seven feet away, so I stepped three feet closer and lifted one of my whips. There were just two things Spitfire could do: she could spring at me and have trouble, or she could jump over the pedestal and have no trouble. She growled a little, looked at me, and then she jumped over that pedestal like a lady. I had called her bluff.
BIANCA RESCUES BOSTOCK FROM "BRUTUS."
"The rest was easy. I put her through some other tricks, circled her around the cage a couple of times, and brought her back to her corner. Then, as she crouched there and snarled at me, I played a tattoo with my whip-handle on the floor just in front of her. It was just a sort of flourish to finish off with, and it was one thing too much; for in doing this I turned quite away from the rest of the group and made Brutus think that I meant to hurt the lioness. He said to himself: 'Hullo! Here's a stranger in our cage taking a whip to Spitfire. I'll just settle him.' And before I could move he sprang twenty feet off his pedestal, set his fangs in my thigh, and dragged me over to Bianca, as if to prove his gallantry. Then the Frenchwoman did a clever thing: she clasped her arms around his big neck, drew his head up, and fired her revolver close to his ear. Of course she fired only a blank cartridge, but it brought Brutus to obedience, for that was Bianca's regular signal in the act for the lions to take their pedestals; and the habit of his work was so strong in the old fellow that he dropped me and jumped back to his place.
"There wasn't any more to it except that I lay five weeks in bed with my wounds. But this will show you how Bianca loved those lions: she wouldn't let me lift a hand to punish Brutus. Of course I called for irons as soon as I got up, and, wounded or not, I would have taught Mr. Brutus a few things before I left that cage if I could have had my way. But Bianca pleaded for him so hard—why, she actually cried—that I hadn't the heart to go against her. She said it was partly my own fault for turning my back,—which was true,—and that Brutus was a good lion and had only tried to defend his mate, and a lot more, with tears and teasing, until I let him off, although I knew I could never enter Brutus's cage again after leaving it without showing myself master. That's always the way with lions: if you once lose the upper hand you can never get it back."