One night the circus reeled and tossed and struggled in the midst of a storm. Peaks lowered, workers struggling about in mud to their knees, horses hook-roped to every wagon, work-elephants wallowing through the mire, the big show strove its best to free itself from the stickiness of a “soft lot” and hurry on to make good the next-day promises of the billboards, a hundred and fifty miles away. In the menagerie, the last of the dens was being boarded up, when an attendant suddenly paused, looked within, then hurried for the superintendent.
“Dingy ain’t showed up yet,” he announced. “Ain’t seen nothin’ of him, an’ Pat’s jumpin’ around his cage an’ barkin’—all excited. It’s way past time for Dingy—I guess he knows it.”
The superintendent gave an order.
“Tear over to the dressing tent, quick. Maybe Miss Laird didn’t turn him loose.”
But the menagerie boy returned with the report that Dingy had started from the dressing tent at his usual hour, apparently on his customary beeline for the kangaroo cage. There was only one explanation: the dog had decided upon a different life and had deserted the show. Up went the boards of the kangaroo cage, the animal leaping excitedly about within, emitting its queer, frightened bark, sure evidence that it too knew something was wrong. All the way to the runs it continued to thump about, to cry out, but there was no remedy. Dingy was gone.
An hour later, at the elephant cars, the superintendent, muddy, bedraggled, tired, was watching the loading of the last bull. There came the dim view of a moving figure in the darkness, then the voice of the menagerie boy.
“Got your spotlight, Boss?” he asked. “I got Dingy here. Found him down at the main runs—crawled all the way, I guess. Smashed up.”
There came the gleam of electricity, then a long moment of silence. Dingy had not run away. Instead, in the muddiness and darkness of the circus lot, he evidently had floundered in the course of a plunging, struggling team. Half of his left side, and of his left hind leg, was literally torn away. Evidently the menagerie had departed when he had summoned the strength to reach the place where it had rested that day. But he had followed, crawling, for nearly a mile to the circus runs.
Dingy died that night. Pat died three weeks later, refusing the companionship of another dog, refusing food, even water. Animal grief, so menagerie men will tell you, is the most intense grief in all the world.
Nor do animals easily forget their cage-mates, especially dogs. Out on the Selig Zoo in Los Angeles are a lioness and a dog living in the same cage, against every effort of the keepers. They were born on the same day, several years ago, and each later became motherless. In an effort to maintain the life of each through companionship, they were placed together and grew to maturity. Then there came the fear that canine and feline nature would assert itself, with a consequent battle and death, with the results that efforts were made to separate the pair.