Their memories are no longer than those of any other intelligent animal, and their clumsiness and slowness are things that exist only in appearance. As for the relationship of ease between the lot of the keeper of the lions and the keeper of the bulls, the lion trainer leads a bored existence. All that is necessary for him to do is to keep a whip rein on a group of beasts, and by a reasonable amount of care guard his own skin. The keeper of the bulls has an entirely different task.
IN WINTER QUARTERS.
IN THE ACT OF A BREAKAWAY.
Inconsistency is a thing which surrounds an elephant on every side in his life in the circus. Just as he is the best-liked beast of the menagerie, so is he the most feared. Just as he is the thing that must be counted upon literally to drag the show out of the mud when the mire of a wet circus lot has sunk every wagon to the wheel hubs and so entangled the heavy conveyances that horseflesh, even tractors, lose their efficiency, so on the very next day he may wreck everything he has worked so hard to save. He will swing forward confidently to the attack, should a lion make a breakaway, but the proximity of a mouse or even a small, harmless snake on a country wayside is the signal for hysteria. He will carry a cannon on his back into a performance and stand immobile while the booming charge breaks in deafening fashion above him, and then, on the next Fourth of July, “go flighty” at the popping of a penny firecracker. He will remain at a picket line through confusion and turmoil while thousands of persons crowd about him, then pull up stakes and chase the daylights out of a candy vender who consistently offends him by selling dainties among the show goers instead of distributing them free along the elephant line. He is the most sagacious animal in captivity, yet, when he becomes frightened he doesn’t know enough to turn out of the way of a brick building. His daily food consists of fully two hundred pounds of roughage, a few pounds of coal which he munches greedily if he can but get it, a bushel or so of grain, ten or twenty pounds of pure dirt—chocolate loam or swamp muck preferred—and a tub or two of water, yet he will quit it all gladly for one lonely peanut or a piece of candy. In the circus world they’ve changed an old, old expression to fit their own needs:
“Inconsistency—thy name is elephant!”
For, it seems, the paradox is a continual thing with the great pachyderms which form the backbone of practically every circus. There is never a time in which they are not depended upon to save the show in times of late arrivals, muddy or sandy lots, or on long hauls from the unloading runs to the exhibition grounds, when the two or three tons of flesh and bone and muscle which every elephant possesses are thrown into play to augment the efforts of the straining draft stock and chugging tractors. Yet, by the same token, upon one man and one alone, depends the task of keeping them the placid, humorous clowns which they really should be, the keeper of the bulls.
In explanation, a herd of elephants—and in some of the big circuses a herd will number as high as twenty-five members—is built upon the monarchial system, with a princess or two, a queen and a king in control. The princesses and queen are elephants; the only male ruler allowed is the superintendent of the herd, the man to whom the queen, or leader, vows allegiance. No matter what other men may do, what other men may command, if the keeper of the herd decides otherwise, then otherwise is the result. The leader obeys him above all others; the princesses obey her, and the male members tag along in a group of bulky camp followers, citizens, agitators and revolutionists. The males make the trouble in an elephant monarchy, the females make the laws and enforce them.
As an example: Old Mom and her herd were in Canada several years ago, and one of its stands was Winnipeg. The performances were dated for Monday and, as is usual with a circus, the show had arrived in town a day ahead. The tents had been erected, the seats placed, the animals fed and exercised, the ring curbs fastened into position, the hippodrome track smoothed into readiness, the rigging for the various aerial acts set, and the circus had settled to rest.