This has its counterpart in the actions of the herd of another circus, which suddenly appeared on the streets of a Canadian town, each waving a gunny sack in very stolid and dignified fashion, as it marched along in parade. The crowds in the street didn’t know what it was all about, nor did a good part of the show, for that matter. Behind it was a theft, a fight, the hint of an elephant insurrection, and a great invention. Archimedes accomplished no more when he discovered the principle of the screw!
It was fly time—and hard ground. There was little dust for the bulls to curl into their trunks and throw on their backs, thus ridding themselves of the pests. The herd was becoming fidgety when Old Mom, the leader, noticed something before her, eyed it in thoughtful mien, then reached forth her trunk to seize it. A gunny sack.
She waved it on the right side, and the flies departed. She tried the other side, then straight over her head. Her back was free! Old Mom shimmied with delight, then draping the gunny sack over one ear, she poked her trunk into the other, to announce a squeal of discovery and of happiness. But while she was doing this, the next elephant in line stole the sack!
Immediately there was trouble. The flies had returned, and Old Mom wanted her sack. But the thief pretended not to notice. Whereupon Old Mom whanged him on the proboscis.
He dropped the sack. But before Old Mom could retrieve it, the third elephant borrowed the fly duster, and when excited animal punks returned with the elephant superintendent, four fights were in progress, while the sack was traveling here and there about the stake line like a football. There was a quick command, then peace. Every elephant was equipped with his own personal fly-swatter, and what is more, they were retained, each being carefully carried to the cars at night when the great, shadowy herd thumped through the semidarkness for its journey to the next town.
Impossible? That an elephant should think of such things? Talk for a while with a circus man who really knows elephants and you’ll find it is only the beginning!
A number of years ago, one of the big shows was making the run from Everett, Washington, to Vancouver, British Columbia, when a wheel broke on the elephant car, sending the big conveyance from the tracks and partly capsizing it at a point just above the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Six of the elephants broke their chains and liberated themselves through the smashed roof of the car, but the seventh was imprisoned, secured by an unusually heavy chain and further hampered by a timber which had penetrated a leg.
The car was barely balanced and threatening with every plunge of the frightened beast within to slide into the waters of the sound. When human aid reached the overturned car, an animal wrecking crew was already at its labors!
Five of the escaped beasts, with much trumpeting and tugging, were pulling away the timbers from the top of the disabled car, and seeking to reach the timbers which held the imprisoned elephant a captive, while the sixth bull was banked half beneath the car and half against it, using a great rock for a toe-hold, to keep the conveyance from going into the waters of the Pacific Ocean! When the disabled animal finally was chopped loose and liberated, the great splinter of wood removed and the wound dressed, solicitous members of the herd surrounded him, examined his wounds with their trunks, “talked” and trumpeted.
Then, in true elephantine fashion, it struck the whole herd that there had been a catastrophe and that they should be terribly frightened, in spite of the fact that more than an hour had elapsed since the wreck. Wide went their ears, high their trunks. Their eyes rolled, and there sounded the chirrup of a panic. Then away they went, for a half-mile or so up the tracks, finally to be corralled and held quiet on a wide stretch of beach until a new car could be sent for them. It seems elephant nature to become far more excited about a thing after it is over than while it is in progress. The reasoning process functions until there’s no more need for it. For which, at least one show is grateful.