All afternoon he remained in that position; no cat was ever more faithful. But the intruder didn’t arrive. Whereupon a menagerie man, with a sense of humor, got an idea.
The next morning Beelgie again took a look at the rat-hole. And as he did, a rodent popped forth!
Whang-g-g-g!
An elephantine trunk had descended, and Beelgie, squealing and fretting, slumped again into his watchful position. No more than he had set himself than another appeared, only to pop back into the hole the minute Beelgie struck at him. Nor could the worried elephant know that the intruder was nothing but a stuffed affair, fastened by a strong rubber band to the interior of the hole and pulled forth at will by a fine wire in the hands of the menagerie attendant across the barn. In fact, Beelgie knew nothing except the fact that the Pied Piper of Hamelin had nothing on him. Three rats. Three blows. Three deaths. So far he was batting a thousand, and he settled himself for an all-day vigil. Word of it traveled to the management. The populace that winter bought the hay for the elephants. Or rather Beelgie bought it, as the chief exhibit, because he killed that stuffed rat, regularly, ten or fifteen times a day until the show took to the road again, and the townspeople paid their dimes to see him do it! Everything’s grist in the circus mill.
Everything but Sunday on the lot. For then, as a general rule, it’s the other way round, especially when the elephants are concerned. It is necessary, except when a long run is to be made and a tremendous distance bridged between two towns, for a circus to “Sunday on the lot,” that is: set up its tents, clean the circus from end to end, repaint poles, repair damage that has been done during the hard traveling of the week, rest the horses and animals, and in general make ready for another six days of constant effort and fighting against time that the show may live true to its billing and its promises of “two performances a day, rain or shine.” It is a time of general overhauling and of rest, a time of relaxation; the elephants’ delight, and the bull-man’s misery. For it is during Sunday on the lot—just as it is with a great many small boys on Sunday—that the elephants think up most of their prankishness. When a “bull” becomes mischievous, it costs money.
One Sunday night in Texas, the night watchman, making his final rounds, noticed that every elephant stood sleepily at the picket pin, and then rolled under a lion cage for a few hours’ sleep of his own. Dawn came and he awoke. All the elephants were still there; everything was quiet. But not so an hour later!
An irate brickyard keeper had appeared, with a sleepy-eyed attorney, hastily summoned from bed. The elephants had ruined his place during the night! A brick kiln had been demolished, piles of bricks scattered and destroyed, the mixer overturned and broken, and the various stacks of tile shattered. The elephants had done it. There began the argument.
The elephants couldn’t have done it; they hadn’t been out of the menagerie! The night watchman testified to the fact; the menagerie workers told of having seen the elephants when they left at night and when they arrived at dawn, perfectly peaceable at the stake line. The argument grew warmer. The legal adjuster was summoned, and then some one suggested that they go to the brickyard.
There the evidence was irrefutable. Everywhere showed the big tracks of an elephant, and the chase led back to the circus. There was no way to controvert the statements of the brickyard owner now. There were no other elephants within a thousand miles. And so the search for the culprit began, to finish as rapidly. Old Mom, the leader of the herd, had been caught red-handed.
Or rather, red-legged. The whole rear expanse of her hind legs, from her hoofs to her hips, was beautifully rouged with brick dust, where she had backed up to a pile of bricks and scratched herself! She had untied the half-hitch of her chain from the picket stake, carefully carried it in her trunk, gone under the side wall, enjoyed a night out, wrecked the brickyard, then returned to the menagerie tent and with one twisting toss—a trick, incidentally, which she took delight in teaching other elephants—had placed that half-hitch back on the stake again!