Lions 'n' tigers 'n' everything

by Courtney Ryley Cooper

Again the call sounded and Old Mom answered, the queen obeying the command of her overlord. The fighting ceased. A new signal sounded from the throat of Old Mom. The elephants steadied. A moment later Alispaw, standing in the connection between the menagerie and the main tent, saw revealed in a flash of lightning a great hulking shadow coming slowly but steadily toward him, while in the rear there followed eight others, practically abreast! Old Mom had heard the voice she sought. That was enough!

OLD MOM AND HER GIRL FRIEND FREIDA.

KAS AND MO WHEN THEY ARRIVED IN AMERICA.

But the fight had only begun. The storm now was taking on a new intensity, a new fury, and the trainer knew that he had but two allies, Mom and Frieda, her elephantine lady in waiting. As soon as possible he caught the two elephants by their ears and stood between them, talking to them, reassuring them, while they wrapped their trunks about him and squealed their delight, while the rest of the herd milled and trumpeted about them, each crowding its utmost to be near the thing which to them meant safety. For nearly an hour it continued, with the fate of the show in the hands of one man, literally buried in a bumping, jostling mass of thirty tons of frightened elephants—one man whom they trusted and whose presence alone could hold them against a new panic. Then slowly, with the aid of his assistants and a lone flickering torch, he began the task of working the mammals back to their picket line.

For Mom and for Frieda it was comparatively easy. For the rest it was a far more difficult task. Alispaw could not be in every place at once, and the moment the herd became strung out to the slightest degree there would be a concerted rush to be near the lead elephants and the keeper who guided them. In vain the assistants strove to drive them back, and at last one of the men, losing his head, struck violently at one of the beasts with an iron-tipped tent stake, only to miscalculate. The blow struck Alispaw, and he dropped unconscious, and the note of fright in Old Mom’s bellow brought a new spasm of fear and a resumption of the milling to the rest of the herd.

Once more they circled and crowded—all but one. That one was Old Mom, half crouched over the prostrate trainer, whimpering and touching him with her trunk, and through her frightened curiosity forming a bulwark against the rest of the surging herd. For a full five minutes this continued; then, dizzy and reeling, the keeper crawled to his feet and renewed his calls of assurance. The storm lessened. Slowly Old Mom wheeled into place at the picket line and submitted to her chains. Frieda came beside her; then, still trembling, still grunting and squealing and protesting, the rest followed. Daylight found the picket line again a thing of comparatively peaceful elephants, and all because of one man!

Nor is this at all unusual. Strictly otherwise. With the Barnum and Bailey Circus is a quiet gentle-voiced man who has been the keeper of the show’s big herd of elephants for more than a quarter of a century, while his aid at the head of the herd is an ancient lady of some eighty-five summers who can read his every intonation, his every command, and who forces her will upon the rest of the herd, or knows the reason why! In elephantdom there appears to be a certain respect for superiority; the leader of the herd attacks with impunity any beast under her control, no matter how fierce it may be, how big or how favored in fighting proclivities. In the winter quarters of one of the Western circuses is a glaring patch of cement work which a few years ago stopped up a gaping hole of some ten feet in diameter where a leader elephant butted a recalcitrant member of her herd through an eighteen-inch brick wall! When the keeper of a herd has the allegiance of that herd’s leader he has fought half his battle. But that keeper may be forced to leave suddenly, and what then?

That’s exactly the question every circus owner asks when there is a sudden shift in the superintendency of the elephant line, and in which there is no time to work in a new keeper gradually as the person in command. More than once it has meant trouble, not only to the circus but to the elephant. In view of this, enter Snyder.