Lions 'n' tigers 'n' everything

by Courtney Ryley Cooper

The fight which followed is history in the circus, passed along from one menagerie superintendent to another as an example of mother love and desperation. Grace was fully fifty pounds lighter than her vengeful mate, but the thought of weight, or power or strength did not seem to enter her mind. She only knew that if once the great, striped thing passed her, three cubs would die, and she fought for them with every vestige of her strength. In vain the menagerie men strove to separate the struggling pair. The hose cart was hurried within the tent, and, the pump working to its utmost, the full force of water was turned upon them, the one thing which can be counted upon to cause a caged animal to desist from an attack. Neither Grace nor Calcutta seemed even to notice it. At last, the side boards were raised, in the hope that darkness might end the battle. It only increased the turmoil within, the noise of which rose higher and higher, at last to cease. The battle was over.

Hurriedly the men dropped the side boards—in a futile hope. Calcutta was dead, stretched almost the length of the compartment, while huddled in a corner lay Grace, bleeding from a hundred tooth and claw marks, but apparently content to lick and growl at the three frightened cubs which tumbled about her!

Nor is it the father which is always the murderer in the tiger family. Sometimes it is the mother herself, following in beast life the theory of Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol” by killing the thing which she loves best!

Of all the caged beasts of the circus, the tiger is the most nervous and high-strung. Permanent insanity among tigers is not at all unusual, while insanity for the mother at the time of the birth of her young is a thing which every menagerie man fears. During this insanity, the tiger is the enemy of everything, including herself. She kills her cubs, she tears at her own flesh, she howls and roars and thunders until the menagerie is a pandemonium. And the next day, once more possessed of her mental balance, she wanders about her cage, whining pitifully, searching, searching for the thing that is gone, her baby, murdered while she had no knowledge of her actions. Nor can anything appease her—month after month she will search, until at last, like a human mother, her grief assuages itself in the expectation of a new brood.

From all of which may be gained the idea that a tiger baby hasn’t an easy time in life. To tell the truth, next to the leopard, its lot is about the hardest in the menagerie. Threatened by both father and mother at birth, with nervous stomachs and belligerent dispositions, the tiger cub fights almost a constant battle for life. Of all the cat animals, a tiger that has passed the danger mark, when it can shift for itself, is the most celebrated thing in the show. And again it is the female which usually wins the tussle. The male tiger is born with blood in his eye. He is not allowed to play about the circus, the pet of every canvasman and roughneck and animal man and performer, as is the lion cub, which in its childhood is little different from a house cat. Instead, the tiger baby must be kept caged. Otherwise it will tackle the first dog that comes along, regardless of the disadvantage in size, and there will be another feline catastrophe to mourn.

As for the leopard, it is the slum child of the animal kingdom. Its mother cares nothing about it, the father is a brute, and almost from the moment that the baby’s eyes are open, it shifts for itself. But what it loses in parental affection, it makes up in play; there is nothing in the whole menagerie which plays harder, not even the monkey. The bars of the cage were made for climbing, and up the leopard kittens go, nor seem to care when they fall from the top of the den, landing on their heads with enough force almost to knock them unconscious. To which the female pays little or no attention.

The result is that the leopard kitten, like the human street urchin, develops an amazing courage and cunning; it is afraid of nothing, brooks no obstacle in its play and, through the bars, will even hiss and snarl at a full-grown lion and give every evidence of a desire to break through and attack it! Meanwhile the mother snores on in her corner, or merely looks up for a moment in half-curious fashion, then goes ahead with her sleep. Babies don’t bother her!

In fact, a great deal of interference on the part of animal attendants enters into the rearings of a healthy baby, especially in the cat tribe. Especially is this true in the matter of diseases, for the life of about one out of every four children that come to healthy maturity is due, not to the mothers, but to the menagerie superintendent and his assistants. Around a circus it is nothing to see a lion cub being rubbed with warm oil, or squawking his displeasure at a mustard draught, or even swaddled in flannel bandages to combat a “cold” which, if allowed to progress, may become pneumonia overnight and result in death. During the epidemics of influenza, those persons with the strongest lungs often were the surest victims, once the disease became seated. So it is with the lion. That beast has the strongest lungs of any animal, and it is the most prone to death, once pneumonia strikes it.

You’ve seen the constant human “sniffler”, always possessing a cold yet never even bothered about it. The baby tiger is its counterpart. More delicate generally, with lungs much weaker, constitutions built upon a less stockier plan, yet pneumonia is rare. Instead, the tiger child prefers to have chills and fever, corresponding to the ague in the human, and shaking through the hours of even a hot afternoon. Incidentally it becomes the recipient of a hated remedy, equally disgusting to the lion, the tiger, the llama, the leopard or the elephant—for they all are dosed with it, as to the human child. Its name is castor oil!

Reverting, however, to leopard babies, theirs is the hardest lot of any in the menagerie. There is no cure for their ailment, which begins to come upon them about the time they are half-grown; every one, it seems, is destined to become a victim; sooner or later a menagerie attendant will motion with his head and announce: