A show which I happened to be visiting was running from Regina, Saskatchewan, in the prairie country, to Saskatoon, when a brake beam dropped, and four flat cars went careening forth upon a railless journey into the free and open country, though not overturning.
The train was stalled, with a great part of its parade and menagerie equipment off the rails, and with the nearest division point twenty miles away. Out at the telegraph wires, the conductor “connected up,” that he might send an announcement of the wreck to the division superintendent, together with the request for a wrecking crew to put the show train back on the rails again. Which wasn’t even noticed by the circus itself. Instead, the train boss called for the keeper of the elephants.
“Never get on the lot to-day if we wait for that wrecker,” he announced. “How about puttin’ them bulls on the job?”
With the result that “them bulls” were put. An hour later, that portion of the train which had remained on the rails had been pulled out of the way, two cars at a time, ties had been placed for a skidway, the four flat cars had been restored to the tracks, and the circus was rushing onward to keep faith with its promises, arriving at its show stand before the wrecking crew and the “big hook” had even been able to leave the division point!
Incidentally, there is one thing about an elephant regarding which there is no uncertainty. He puts everything he possesses into everything he does, except work. And the greatest of this wholeheartedness comes in his likes and dislikes.
There is woe upon a big circus when two elephants, for instance, decide that they want to be chums. When that decision happens, neither fire, flood, pestilence nor disaster can keep them apart. They will accompany each other when there is work to be done, or there won’t be any work. They will break locks, pull up stakes, untie chain hitches and half-hitches, wreck elephant cars, anything to be near the particular elephant which they have selected as a comrade. Nor is this a mating instinct. It happens more often between female and female and between male and male than otherwise. But when it comes along, there’s no doubt as to whether an elephant has a will of its own!
In a circus which plays the Pacific coast, Gladys and May decided that they just must be chums. Being separated by the whole length of the bull line simply broke their girlish hearts. They had the urge as strongly as those strange pairs you’ve sometimes seen in human life, wearing the same cut and pattern of clothing, the same kind of hat, the same sort of shoes, and walking eternally with their arms about each other. The bull-men decided, just to be obstinate, that Gladys and May could get along very well as they were, and when they discovered that Gladys one day had untied her chain and wobbled over to her girl friend, they promptly took her back, wrapped her chain around the stake again and then secured it with a clevis pin, which worked with a bolt and nut attachment. Then they left her, to go about their labors of the day.
Gladys remained at her stake until the menagerie crew went to the evening meal in the cookhouse. When the menagerie superintendent returned, however, it was to find Gladys down at the end of the stake line again, talking over things with her friend, May. What was more, that clevis pin was missing!
They searched everywhere, but they could not find it. Evidently, by diligent work with the strong, but sensitive “finger” of her trunk, Gladys had unbolted the pin and then hidden it. But where? They searched the straw. It wasn’t there. They went outside the tent. No clevis pin. Three days later, it was discovered in the straw of the bull car, Gladys had hidden it in the pouch of her under-lip, next to the jaw, carried it there all during the evening and then taken it with her to the bull car, where she had secreted it in a place which she believed safe from the prying eyes of circus men. An elephant doesn’t remain at its stake because it feels itself a prisoner. There is hardly an elephant in America that is not a pachydermic Houdini. Hitches, half-hitches, square knots, slip-nooses, single and double ties, all are the same when one of the big mammals decides that it’s tired of being attached to a stake. With the result that when an elephant takes the notion that its life isn’t complete without the company of another pachyderm, it generally wins out, or causes trouble.
On another show one year, this chummy instinct became rampant, the worst of it all being the fact that the elephants had picked out as their pals beasts which worked in opposite rings during the circus performance. The result was that when the big animals were led into the arena, a scramble inevitably resulted, with elephants squalling and trumpeting and squealing in protest, then, becoming rebellious, chasing half across the tent to get into the ring which their chums occupied, until at last it was necessary to make a recasting of the whole herd so that the “friends” might be together. But in the circus, even irritable conditions sometimes become useful. Which brings up again the case of Mom and her friend Frieda—and a toothache.