Lions 'n' tigers 'n' everything

by Courtney Ryley Cooper

Which was fine for Bill. But, as the store-owner confessed laughingly, it was a little hard on the customers, especially those who didn’t know that Bill was amiable and harmless. His response to my entrance had been an extraordinarily tame affair; he usually jumped to the top of the counter, slapped his hands excitedly as if in an effort to understand what the customer wanted, then with a wild swoop descended to the floor again, seized a paper sack, filled it with sunflower seed and passed it forth. If the customer became frightened, the old bird storekeeper was very, very sorry. But Bill must have his joke!

For Bill, to his old German master, was all but human. Before his bird store days, the owner had sailed the seas as the captain of a tramp freighter, and his ship never had been without a simian mascot. Then he had taken to land and as a present, his former first mate, now the Captain, had brought him, after nine months of wandering about the ocean, this orang-outang. Bill had been one of the crew aboard ship. Now he became one of the proprietors of the bird store, for he was something more than an orang-outang to the owner of the little “emporium”—he represented the life that the old skipper loved, and if the customers didn’t like the association of the strange, grinning creature, that was just too bad. The owner liked him and that was enough.

So there they lived together, Bill and the Old Man, as he was known. Several years went by. Then one day, the old first mate came for a visit to his one time captain.

A scream sounded from the orang-outang. In the years which he had spent in the bird store Bill had learned to walk erect, but now, with swift jungle leaps, he ran toward the visitor, crawled up into his arms and clung to him, cooing and chattering. During the hours of the visit, he would not be separated, but at last the parting came.

“Stay there,” said the former first mate, “I’ll be back.”

They never met again. But those who knew the store told of a big orang-outang who sat for hours each day, watching the boats of the Columbia River which flowed behind the store; the whistle of a vessel, signaling for a bridge upstream would cause him to leap with excitement and hurry for the door that he might wait and wait until the ship had gone downstream. But he did not grieve. Apparently it was enough to watch the ships which represented the life whence he had come; he was happy in merely looking at them, as was the old Captain. Persons who knew the store told of the twain of them sitting on the steps together, the old salt’s arms about the shoulders of the orang-outang, and both of them looking out toward the river, where traveled the boats which represented the life which both once had lived. Then the proprietor died. The orang-outang went to a circus—and to a cage, away from his visions of the sea. He died of grief within three months!

Strange, but the sea seems to have a fascination for simians—sentimental for the most part; sometimes otherwise. One of the money-making enterprises of tramp steamers which ply the West Coast is the landing of rhesus monkeys from South America, brought to this country in huge crates containing sometimes as high as fifty of the small creatures. It is inevitable that now and then a seaman should take a fancy to one of the monkeys and, taking him from the cage, make a ship’s pet of him. Naturally, it is a gradual affair, the seaman watching his charge until he has become familiar with his surroundings, and devoid of fright. This little diversion, however, in one instance led to tragedy.

The one simian which had gained the run of the ship evidently believed the same sort of life would be good for the rest of his comrades. He returned to the crate where, more by accident than anything else, he managed to release the latch which held the crate door. A moment later, the hold was swarming with monkeys.

This would have been all right, except for the intervention of another ship’s mascot, a large bull dog, which happened into the hold about that time, saw the strange occupants, and began an excited chase. The monkeys moved for the deck, scampering across it and at last bringing up, huddled and excited, upon a life raft. Then one of them glanced below and saw the sea beneath, rushing past as the ship moved on its journey.

He chattered and gesticulated. The others crowded about him, dazed, hypnotized, it seemed, by the movement of the water. Evidently the same fascination which attacks a person at the edge of a high roof had come over these tiny animals. A moment more and with a weird cry, one of the monkeys leaped—to his death in the sea. Then another, and another and another—before the crew could rescue a single member of the escaped band, every one of them had yielded to the strange power of suggestion and had leaped into the ocean, there to struggle wildly for a moment, then be lost in the swirling wake.