But that last bucket of water had extinguished the fire.
CHAPTER II
TRAMPING IT TO CAGEDOM
ALL the romance about a circus isn’t confined to its sprawled tents, its beauty and rhythm of performance, its life of the padroom and dressing tents, its screaming calliope, bringing up the rear of the parade. Nor does it always concern its people, romantic as their lives may be. Oftentimes there is another angle, of which the public hears little; even the sideshow lecturer doesn’t touch upon it. That angle concerns the animals.
All because there are often animals with a past in the circus, which have come to it by far different means than the customary ones. Beasts that greet the little seaport towns of the coast countries with strange yowlings and excitements, which only the circus people understand. Those animals might not even recognize a jungle. But they recognize the sea—often it means the happiest home they ever knew, a home to which they went as babies, forgetting the natural habitat where they had come into the world, and gaining their impressions of life from the deck of a rolling vessel, with every member of the crew for a friend and playmate. The next time, for instance, that you see one of the great apes, and notice a strange, wistful expression in his eyes, don’t fancy that he is grieving for his jungles. Rather, he may be longing for the fo’c’stle of a tramp steamer wallowing in the great waves, the phosphorescence of a tropical sea gleaming at the prow and wake, the sailors sprawled about and this great ape a seaman also, counting it all as his home and his happiness.
For the tiger, the lion and the other members of the cat tribe, for most of the elephants and for practically all the ruminants or hay eaters which find their way into the menagerie of a circus, there is an organized business which provides the channels by which wild beasts become the tamed, or at least, the occupants of zoölogical cages. A business in itself, with branches in various parts of the world, training quarters, shipping facilities and all the other necessities for the capture and handling of anything from a secretary bird to a rhinoceros; this form of enterprise, conducted principally by Hagenbeck of Hamburg, forms the principal means of providing the hundreds upon hundreds of wild animals which go to make up the zoölogical collections of the country. But opposed to this is a different form of entry in which the lines are not laid in such regular fashion, and by means of which some of the greatest animal personalities of circusdom have found their way to America—those off-course wanderers of the sea, the West-coasters or tramp steamers which rarely touch port in America without making an addition to this country’s menageries. This portion of the cargo never appears on the records. It’s a sideline which has yielded many a story of animal importation, and without which, in all probability, some of the most widely known giant apes that ever have been in captivity still might be wandering the jungles.
Apes, the chimpanzee, the orang-outang, the gorilla, look upon bars and cages in the same light that a human being views them. They mean prison. It is only when a friendly relationship has been established, and the beast knows that incarceration is not a form of punishment, that close captivity is accepted. Therefore, these beasts cannot be simply taken from the jungle, slapped into a cage, and brought to the circus. More, they cannot endure the cold weather so often attendant upon a landing upon the eastern coast. The result is that the Pacific Coast is the natural landing point for these animals, and their means of entrance in the majority of cases, the captain or first mate of a tramp steamer, augmenting his earnings by bringing new specimens of apedom to captivity. Where the tramps touch on foreign shores, there the natives know that a jungle animal, and particularly one that can be given the run of the ship, is a thing desired. With the result that rarely does one of these tramps start, America bound, without an extra passenger; which comes to know the ship as home, the sailors as friends and the sea as a place to love. That memory lingers.
A number of years ago, I happened to walk into an unpretentious little “bird store” in Portland, Oregon. A bell, attached to the door, jingled in the rear, whence came the noise of a hammer, pounding against tin. A voice sounded, guttural, yet kindly.
“See who it is, Bill.”
A cooing, squealing call responded. Then, while I gaped, there came from behind the partition, walking sloppily erect, a great, bowlegged, long-armed orang-outang, which trundled behind the counter, rested one arm upon it, gazed at me for a moment, handed me a package of birdseed from a shelf, then with excited cries and cooing ran behind the partition again. A moment later, a grinning German, hammer still in hand, came forth.
“He vould nott be happy unless he answered dot bell!” he announced.