‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I get a scratch now and then by accident; but it is done in play, for I love my animals and they love me.’
I asked Hagenbeck what the lot of six tigers and three lions were worth. He answered that when he first trained them he was offered £7,500 for them. ‘But I would not take it,’ he added. ‘Why, they bring me in £4,000 a year clear profit when on the road, besides the advertisement they give me.’
In one house I saw 150 monkeys. Three large lion houses contained twenty-five lions, twenty-one Bengal tigers, and five crosses between lion and tiger, seen nowhere else in the world. Two of these lion-tigers were three weeks old, and were being suckled by a fox-terrier bitch. Two were one year and two weeks old, and one (a magnificent animal) was full-grown. It is five years old, is fawn-coloured and faintly striped; it weighs 450 lb., is 10 feet long, and stands 45½ inches high at the shoulder. It is the largest carnivorous animal alive. In one of the lion houses was a magnificent collection of red-deer horns from Hungary, Germany, and Denmark. In an elephant house were twelve elephants, including a female elephant suckling a youngster eight months old. The female was served in captivity, and is now expected to give birth to a second.
There were 28 big Arabian baboons, 40 adult females, and 92 young ones, a very large number of polar bears, wolves, foxes, dogs, hyænas, leopards, 8 various bears, and many birds. There were, however, no giraffes, and Hagenbeck, when questioned, said, even now the Soudan has been opened again, he fears that there are not so many giraffes as there used to be there. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘in the summer season of 1876 I had no less than thirty-five giraffes in my menagerie.’
A staff of twenty men is employed in the menagerie, and it costs Carl Hagenbeck £4,000 a year to feed his collections in Hamburg and Stellingen.
‘All the animals look so well,’ I remarked. ‘How is it done?’
‘Do you know what the secret is?’ said Carl Hagenbeck. ‘It is not warmth that animals and birds require. Why, I can show you photographs of my zebras and flamingoes, my lions and my antelopes, standing out in deep snow, and preferring it to a stuffy enclosed den. The secret of how to keep wild animals well is fresh air. They must have fresh air. All my lions can walk from their warm dens out into an open-air den. That’s why they are well. Your lion house in London is no good. You have outside cages, it is true, but the animals are only allowed there in the summer months. Must animals be allowed fresh air only in the summer? Certainly not. They must have fresh air all the year round, not hot, stuffy cages during the whole winter.’
These are wise words from the most observing, most successful keeper of live animals in the world.
During my inspection of the Handels Menagerie it was impossible to take photographs, owing to the rain and terrific hailstorms.
‘Will you come now and see my animal park at Stellingen?’ asked Herr Hagenbeck.