Like many a human orphan, the adult result has become extremely valuable in its little world. One, for instance, was Sultan, now a prized performer which, through the illness of its mother at the time of its birth, was neglected by her until human interference was necessary. The person who interfered was Lucia Zora, famous elephant and animal trainer, and wife of the menagerie superintendent. For three months Zora carried her adopted “child” to and from the circus lot in a covered lunch basket, while the yowling youngster demanded his bottle—a regulation baby’s nursing bottle—every two hours, the milk being prepared in the same manner as for a real child.
Nor did night bring any surcease from the care of the infant lion. Midnight always brought hunger and squalling which awakened the whole Pull-man where Sultan was supposed to sleep under Zora’s berth, but where it did everything from chewing up curtains to running off with the shoes of the actors. At five o’clock in the morning came the same performance, with the result that Zora spent a good part of the time when she should have been resting in hauling forth dishes, an alcohol stove and the inevitable bottle for the feeding of the orphan. For four months the baby clung to the bottle before he would lap milk. Following which the lion proved to be a little experiment in environment. Also an evidence that jungle animals are no different from the human race. The cave man ate only meat; he knew nothing else. The same with jungle beasts. During the struggle of the Ringling-Barnum Circus to save the life of John Daniel, a few years ago, the only thing which sustained the big ape was beef broth. Yet gorillas are vegetarians. With Sultan, scion of meat-eating family, there came the time during his two years of petting when he relished asparagus, bread and butter, buttered beets, and had a particular liking for strawberries and cream.
During the winter months of those two years he lived in Zora’s home—or rather, did his best to wreck it, madly swinging on the bottom of the lace curtains, and once climbing the table cloth and pulling it to the floor, just at the moment when it was covered with food for four guests. All of which Zora forgave. But when Sultan sallied forth one day, killed three pet Belgian hares, two prized White Orpingtons, and chased a neighbor’s cat through that neighbor’s house, knocking over chairs, pulling down curtains, sweeping clean the shelves of a pantry and causing a riot call to police headquarters, Zora decided that perhaps the best place for a lusty young lion was in a cage in the menagerie house.
Another famous lion, said by a great many to be the greatest performing lion in the world, was also a bottle baby, raised by about the same methods by Mrs. Walter Beckwith, and a member of the Beckwith troupe of lions which do a great deal of work in the motion-picture studios. There is one difference, however, and that was the fact that he never was allowed to grow hungry, nor was any one ever allowed to go near him at feeding time, which invariably took place within his cage. The result was that food came to represent to him something which need not be sought, and which could be found only within a cage; hence the animal has no thought of it when he is working outside his den and can be trusted implicitly.
However, for two animals, there is no such thing as surcease from orphanage, the tiger and the leopard. Both are too frail, too prone to inherited weaknesses, to survive on artificial feeding. But all this is overcome by the child hippopotamus, who, once taken from the side of his hefty mother, demands a nurse, and in no uncertain terms. The baby hippo, the whole half-ton of him, wants a human companion, and if he doesn’t get one, right then he lays himself down and literally bawls himself to death. He won’t eat, he won’t sleep, he won’t play in the waters of his tank; he just wants a playmate. Incidentally, this yearning for companionship once caused one of the strangest sights in the circus world.
Bon was the baby, a bulbous thing of some five hundred pounds when he arrived from the old home place on the River Nile. The result was that Bon began to grieve to such an extent that he worked himself into a state of hysteria, if such a thing can be imagined in a member of the hog family, to which the hippo belongs. Then one day the crisis arrived; Bon began to beat his head against the bars, a favorite method which grieving hippopotami seem to have for committing suicide. That night Bon was happy. He had a human companion, known by no other name than Mike—and the world was good again.
The story of Mike and Bon has been told in a previous chapter, for it is a little instance of the love of a man for a fool beast, and a love that was returned. Enough that Mike gave his life to save that of the hippopotamus. But there is one incident that has not been told, the story of his burial.
The circus bought a lot for Mike in one of the best cemeteries of the Western town near which his death occurred. The usual “round robin” went about the circus lot for flowers. There was only one time in which the show people could pay their last respects to the faithful Mike, and that came between parade and show time. That morning, the few people in the big cemetery saw a strange cavalcade turn through the gates of the burial place, winding among the silent tombstones and mausoleums. The band men atop the carved wagons playing music strange to the circus; the lions shifting in their cages; the equestriennes, with their white, be-ribboned horses, riding beside the hearse; the snares and bases of the Zouave drum corps muffled and beating in slow time to the funeral music from the big-top and kid-show bands; the clowns slumped on the big tableaux—the whole circus, Mike’s beloved circus, with its colors, its beautiful, mottled parade horses, its cages, its clowns and couriers and Wild West riders, with Bon whining in his big tank in dumb wonderment as to what had become of his companion—Mike’s circus had come to say good-by. And some way, to those who watched, there was nothing strange about it, nothing incongruous. They were of his life—a grim, rushing, tumultuous life behind its covering gaudiness, and neither the paint, nor the spangles, nor glittering colors seemed to matter.
I’ve often wondered what the conversation would be if a bunch of menagerie mothers could get together and talk over the various traits of their children, as humans do. There should be some very good conversation, for each baby, it seems, has his own particular temperament and characteristics.
For instance, the matter of play. Even a baby hippopotamus will play, somewhat after the fashion of a lopsided barrel. An elephant baby is as mischievous as a young puppy. The only way to keep a monkey baby from playing is to hogtie him, and tigers, lions, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars and all the rest of the cat tribe play themselves into exhaustion. Especially if some kind-hearted keeper has tossed them a ball of catnip. But for the llama and camel youngsters, there is no such thing in existence. They know absolutely nothing about play! A gamboling camel or a frolicking llama would send a menagerie man to the doctor immediately to ask if he’d been drinking too much.