Lions 'n' tigers 'n' everything

by Courtney Ryley Cooper

They called him the biggest elephant in captivity. Whether he was or not, he was one of the best performers, one of the most intractable, and at the same time one of the most valuable. When Snyder departed this life it meant that a twenty-five thousand-dollar performing tusker, trained to walk on his hind hoofs about the whole circumference of the hippodrome track, at the same time carrying his trainer on his three-foot tusks, left the circus world forever. As a result his trainers were selected with care and the slightest evidence of must, or badness, in his eyes was the signal for instant and various activities to hold him from a stampede. Far better to keep a valuable elephant out of parades and performances—even to imprison him day after day in the bull cars—than to run the risk of a rampage which may end in the necessity for an execution.

Consequently Henry Boucher, a trainer, was eased into Snyder’s life with all the care of the launching of a yacht when his old keeper resigned a few years ago. The elephant gradually accepted his new master, then came to love him. Two years passed, in which Boucher held the big performer safe from runaways, stampedes and temperamental outbreaks. Then, a year ago, in Salina, Kansas, the trainer became violently ill and was forced to leave the circus on short notice.

The next day Snyder grunted and snorted and trumpeted in vain. His trainer was gone. That afternoon the beast was kept out of performance, and he weaved uneasily at his picket chain, slapping his trunk viciously at every passing candy seller—how every elephant hates them—even refusing food. His eyes began to cloud slightly, the first indication of must. The matinée performance ended, and an assistant, assigned to the position of substitute trainer, released the chain which held the be-tusked brute and led him into the empty big top, or main tent, for a first rehearsal under new management.

Snyder listened to just one command. Then with a rush he knocked the substitute from his path, splintered the quarter poles which crisscrossed before him, smashed a path through a tier of seats, broke through the side walling, lowered his head, then with a great butting lurch overturned the first wagon he saw, headed back through the side walling of the menagerie, seized the monkey cage at its tongue base with his trunk and threw it from him like a boy throwing a baseball. The cat animals began to roar and screech; he made for the dens, one by one, and overturned them. The hippopotamus grunted excitedly in his five-ton den, and Snyder rushed for it like the maddened thing he was; an impact followed like the crashing of runaway engines, and the den, with its bulky freight, catapulted through the side wall and ten feet clear of the tent.

They tried to surround him by peaceful elephants, to mingle him with the rest of the herd and thus return him to captivity. It was useless. Snyder had turned renegade; he recognized no superior and he fought the leader of the herd with the same frenzy that he fought any inanimate object which blocked his path. So at last they sent for rifles; nor was it long before twenty-five thousand dollars in elephant flesh became only an object for a museum. Four steel bullets in his brain had ended the career of an elephant which had refused to recognize any one but the master of his choice.

So you see there are grounds for that circus saying regarding inconsistency. Once an elephant becomes thoroughly angry, little can block his path. Yet in the regular course of events that same elephant actually can be afraid of his own shadow!

On one of the big shows are Kas and Mo, named respectively and respectfully for Kansas and Missouri. Both are what are known to the bull-men as agitators, both flighty, unreasoning, and seemingly always anxious to find something that will serve as an excuse for trouble. Both also are punks, the circus name for anything not yet full grown, and the lack of maturity in age may account for the equal absence of steadiness in character. In any event their course has been a stormy one. Their first day on the show, when they arrived fresh from India in the care of a Singhalese, ended with a general stampede of the entire herd when the two punks decided to run straight through it without an introduction; the panic, although it lasted only the length of a city block, resulted in nearly a thousand dollars in damages. The first windy day after their arrival brought a breakaway on their part, and the danger of a like action on the part of the adult members of the herd. The first parade was one of constant attempts at runaways and the smashing of a two-hundred-dollar plate-glass window. Finally there came the time when, at the slightest hint of any unusual happening, Kas and Mo were loaded hurriedly into the first available wagon and sent unceremoniously to the cars. This continued during the entire first season.

However, elephant trainers are persistent beings, and all that winter the keeper of the herd labored with Kas and Mo to bring them to a condition of dependability. To every possible noise, action and circumstance that might cause fear on their part they were subjected, until the flighty brutes were considered proof against anything that might occur on a circus lot. Then they were turned over to Lucia Zora, wife of the menagerie superintendent, for a novelty in elephant training—the driving of the diminutive pachyderms in tandem style before a flower-bedecked two-wheel cart. It really seemed that Kas and Mo had reformed. They learned quickly; they obeyed every command.

Springtime came and the show went forth to its first exhibition stand, rehearsing, as is usual, for three days before the opening date. Everything was lovely. Kas and Mo, garlanded and festooned with strands of paper flowers, took their place in the grand entrée like veterans. Zora was pleased. So was the keeper of the bulls. So was the owner of the show. So was every one. The past was forgotten.

The opening day arrived. Kas and Mo went into parade with their woman trainer, their garlands of roses and their high-wheeled cart, looking neither to the right nor to the left. At the afternoon performance they moved into their position in the elephant section of the grand entrée in a manner both joyous and faithful. Night arrived, the chandeliers gleamed, the signal to prepare for entrée sounded from the whistle of the equestrian director, and the punks took their place at the head of the section, awaiting the time when the rest of the entrée should emerge from the flags, or performers’ entrance, that they, with the remainder of the menagerie exhibits, might enter at the other end of the tent, thus filling the hippodrome track simultaneously. At the head of the tandem was Kas, somewhat anxiously awaiting the signal to start. At the left was a low-hung chandelier which caught the beast’s body and silhouetted it against the near-by side wall of the menagerie tent. Beyond was a main tent filled with gaping spectators, staring vapidly toward the empty rings and stages and hippodrome track, waiting for the show to begin. And just then Kas saw its shadow on the side wall.