In the next three weeks the lioness wore out six pairs of shoes. In the meantime she began to round out; her eyes became clearer, and the frenzies of scratching less pronounced. In a month the paws had healed and a seventh pair of shoes was placed on her feet, to last far longer than the others. Gradually the big cat became saner, more natural. At last the scratching ceased entirely; the shoes were removed, and the menagerie superintendent gave a verdict of returned sanity. Exercise, which might otherwise have killed the beast, through infection of those torn paws, had effected a cure, through a set of leather shoes. And to-day that lioness is back in her act, clear and strong again. After all, there’s more to the care of menagerie animals than merely feeding them!
CHAPTER VII
THE ELLYPHANTS ARE COMING-G-G!
ONE drizzly, murky day last spring, a heavily loaded freighter pushed a course through the fog toward New York, then brought up clumsily at quarantine. A tug approached in cocky haste. A man climbed aboard, searched through the few passengers, found the person he sought and asked a hurried question.
“How many bulls did you bring over?”
The other, a representative of the Hagenbeck interests of Germany, wholesale dealers in jungle animals, grinned.
“Seven. But—”
“I’ll take ’em all!”
“But—you can’t. They’re not for sale.”
“Not for—?”
“Nope,” the animal man grinned again, “they’re all sold. The Ringling bunch heard somewhere that I had ’em aboard and they bought ’em by radio, a thousand miles out at sea!”