“Fine bunch Hagenbeck’s handed me!” came dolefully. “He’s sent over a bull that’s used to running things in the herd. I’ve already got a leader. What’ll happen when they get together? Fight their heads off, I guess.”
Nor were the bull-men quite sure themselves what the outcome would be; it was about the same proposition as a general manager being hired for a factory where the only executive position was already filled. With some misgivings, they led Mom and her friend Frieda into the menagerie tent and put them with the herd. Nothing happened. A few days went by, in which Bumps, the regular leader, continued at her job as the mainspring of the herd, Mom and her chum, Frieda, merely tagging along and doing what the rest did. Then something happened!
There wasn’t a revolution; in fact, it just seemed to happen. In the herd was a young elephant which was being trained and which didn’t like the procedure. On the third day after Mom’s arrival, the bull-keeper placed his hook gently behind the student’s ear to lead him forth to his lessons. The elephant protested, squealing as though in pain, as though the keeper were using cruelty and really plunging the hook deep in his flesh. Old Mom watched the proceeding with interest.
More, when that scholar came back to his place in line, still squealing the distress signal, Old Mom walked over to him, eyed him carefully, reached forth her trunk and very tenderly examined the skin behind the ear, as though searching for some evidence of a wound. She didn’t find it; the elephant had lied about that bull-hook. Immediately Old Mom gave her verdict, by tightly coiling her trunk, then sending it forth with the force of a pile driver, striking the malingerer squarely in the forehead and flooring him. After which she calmly walked back to her stake.
Immediately the picket line became a thing of low-voiced chirrups, of excited trumpeting and of general chatter, so complicated that even the animal men didn’t know what it was all about. But they found out the next morning.
It was dawn, and a long haul from the circus train to the lot. The twenty-four-hour man, standing in the middle of the road, flagged down the cookhouse wagon and shouted a message:
“Let the bulls go first. Two or three bridges that don’t look any too safe. Better wait ’till the elephants have tested ’em.”
Whereupon the announcement traveled on down the line to the elephant superintendent, and a moment later he passed on the run, his gigantic charges trundling after. They reached the first bridge.
“Bumps!” he shouted. But Bumps hung back. Instead, in her place, as calmly as though she had occupied the position all her life, Old Mom walked forward, followed by Frieda, placed one foot on the bridge, hefted her weight to it, pronounced it safe, and crossed, her handmaiden close beside her, and Bumps taking third place in line. It had been accomplished overnight. The herd had found the kind of a leader it wanted—and elected her. Old Mom has been in command ever since!
Nor was ever a political boss more autocratic. Like many another leader of elephant herds, Old Mom has her system, which runs from rewards to punishments, from “beating up” the male members or agitators to soothing the feelings of some squealing “punk,” fresh from its fright of the first lesson in elephant training. Never does Old Mom neglect to check up on the effects of the first few days at school. With the sensitive “finger” of her trunk working with the exactness of a measuring tape, she covers, inch by inch, the spots where the ropes have been tied to trip the animal in the process of teaching it to lay down, examines the spots behind the ears and along the trunk where the elephant men are wont to catch the beast with their elephant hooks, looking everywhere for evidences of rope burns or cruelty. If she finds them, there is bellowing and hatred for an inefficient animal trainer, often leading to investigation by the animal superintendent and the discharge of the offending trainer. If she doesn’t, which is usually the case, she merely cajoles the beast with slow-sounding, reed-like noises, gradually calming it. And if the animal persists in its foolish fears, she whacks it across the face with her trunk and walks away in disgust. The queer thing is that she is able to discern between real and bogus fright; she seems to know that her charges are naturally lazy and that they’ll get out of work if they can! More than once Old Mom has been known to halt in her labors on the show-lot that she might eye carefully the elephant which is working with her, or pretending to work. The best little trick that an elephant knows is to place its head within about an eighth of an inch of a wagon and pretend to push, while really not exerting an atom of effort. It often fools the bull-men. But it doesn’t fool Old Mom. One whirling blow of that trunk and Mom herself does the resting.