So goes the story of the menagerie kid; but varied as the youthful occupants of the cages may be, there is one thing in which they share alike, the kindergarten. Their schooling begins almost the moment they are able to understand; the fool camel is “halter broke” so his mother can bite him on the head at will; the lions, tigers, leopards and other cat animals are taught not to “fight” the feeding fork or the cage scrapers, by which the dens are cleaned; the monkeys are taught not to reach between the bars of their cage; the hippopotamus is brought out of its den as often as possible, so that it will not shake itself to death in fear of the menagerie crowds—for the hippo is the most easily frightened of all animals; the elephant is made “hook-wise,” or taught that the pointed bull-hook is merely a thing devised to guide it and not something to cause pain; the zebra is walked time and again past the lion cages to assure him that the inmates will not kill him, and so it goes throughout the whole list, each animal being taught the rudiments which he must know before any kind of arena training can even be considered. Withal, it is a tedious task, expressed best perhaps by one of the menagerie attendants during the auspicious advent of Baby Miracle:
“Gosh! I sure wish all these here punk animals could be borned grown up!”
CHAPTER V
THE DOG WAGON
NIGHT on the circus lot. The big top, shadowy, dim, even in the glare of the electric arcs atop the ticket wagon, had fallen, now to lay, a flattened mushroom upon the ground, while hurrying canvasmen unfastened the lacings, and the barking lot superintendent prepared for the lowering of the poles. One by one the big wagons were trucking toward the first smoking torch at a corner of the grounds, the beacon light to guide tired horses and men toward the loading runs, half a mile away. The “led stock” and “ring stock” already had made its way toward the horse cars. The “bull cars” were loaded, except for the three work-elephants which had been left on the lot for emergency, and which now, gray hulks against the shafts of light, were released at last, and obedient to the hook of the bull-man, were trundling in satisfied fashion toward their rest for the night. The menagerie superintendent approached.
“That mutt still on the job?” he asked.
The bull-tender nodded.
“Yeh—over there.”
Something stirred in the shadows, came forward a few steps, hesitated, then hurried into hiding again. The superintendent grunted.
“Looks okay. Watch him at the cars. If he stacks up, join him out.”
Again a nod. Then the elephant line went on, while the shadowy trailer followed in the darkness, fearful of coming too close, yet equally fearful, it seemed, of dropping too far behind. It had been thus for three nights now—a disappearance in the daytime, a reappearance at night, when the steel loading runs were down and the railroad yards a clatter of shouts and grinding steel, as, one after another, the wagons of the big show were loaded for the night.