Lions 'n' tigers 'n' everything

by Courtney Ryley Cooper

The day for dress rehearsal came—the final time of practice, in which the whole show, from spectacle to races, is run through—and twelve elephants of the herd of twenty-two, each with its heavy velvet blankets, its trappings and its howdah, were led into position to await the signal for entrée. Which was also the signal for trouble.

The acoustics of a building are far different from those of a tent. The minute the band started, so did the elephants. Some arrived at the arena by the front entrance. Some shot down the chutes into the basement, some headed straight for the horse stalls, crippling a number of the ring stock, and six became wedged in another chute, and for a time threatened the safety of that portion of the building. At last sweating, shouting bull-men corralled them and prepared for the only possible thing,—to rehearse their charges all night if necessary to make them ready for the next afternoon’s show.

The program was followed; dawn found the elephants still being forced through their entrance and their tricks. But even after twelve hours of practice only four of the big beasts were found sufficiently tractable to risk in entrée.

Show time came, with the blankets again, the trappings and the howdahs. The elephants made their entrance. The audience applauded enthusiastically. All of which was another new noise to the nervous beasts. Off went the four, heading for their picket line in the basement, and starting a panic among the pachyderms that had been left behind. Three hours later the tired elephant men reported peace again, but only for a short time. The night show brought another near-panic, and the “preposterous poundage of ponderous pachyderms” was eliminated from the program of the circus, at least as far as the Coliseum was concerned. In this connection, the circus man is no person to take risks. His first thought is his audience, and when animals show signs of incorrigibility, they are removed from performance until they have become good again.

In the two weeks of the show’s engagement which followed, the trainers prepared for the future. Every unusual noise, every possible thing that might be the cause of fright on the part of the beasts, was provided for. Horses dragging sacks were ridden up and down in front of them; guns were fired behind them, tin cans dropped in a pile in front of them; they were even entertained every few hours by a pair of fighting dogs! Whenever an animal trainer thought of a noise or thing that might frighten an elephant, the picket line immediately was introduced to it, with trimmings.

On the last day of the engagement the trainers reported that they believed they had made progress sufficient to allow the presentation of one elephant act. The presentation was all. The only action was that of the entire herd rushing wildly for that dearly beloved basement and its comparative safety.

But now there came a new chance; the show left the indoors and went into the open, back to the land of canvas. For three months there was nothing more dangerous than minor fretfulness and lone recalcitrants, and it was believed that trouble at last was over. Then, at Rawlins, Wyoming, where the cow-puncher population of the entire surrounding country had congregated to watch the unloading of the big circus, the bulls were led forth as usual—and a dog fight started!

A rampage began less than a minute later. Five minutes more and the railroad yards were filled with wandering, frightened elephants; a passenger train was stalled at the station, the engineer fearing to pull out lest his coaches be overturned by an elephant galumphing forth from a hiding place behind a box car; the passenger station was filled with refugees; and the cow-punchers were eagerly volunteering to rope the darned critters an’ bring ’em in, draggin’ behind a saddle pommel. More, when six of the bulls took to the open prairie the offer was accepted—anything that looked like aid was a welcome thing to the circus just then—and the strangest roping contest in Wyoming’s history began. Also the greatest defeat that a bunch of Western cow-punchers ever knew.

Not that they didn’t succeed in roping the big beasts, for they did. But that was the end of the capture. The minute a rope settled about an elephant’s neck the pachyderm decided to go elsewhere, taking rope, horse and cow-puncher with him until the lariat snapped. As a last resort some thirty of the cow hands decided upon a form of elephant round-up, an attempt to force the elephants to submission by the usual methods of a cattle round-up. It lasted only until the six recalcitrants decided to move on. Whereupon they lowered their heads, pushed the horses and riders out of the way and loped gayly forth to new fields and broader prairies. Late that night a new relay of cow-punchers, accompanied by a half dozen of the captured elephants which had been thoroughly pacified, and headed by the bull-keepers, found the truants a full twenty-five miles from town, and by mingling them with the passive beasts finally returned them to the cars. After which another full three weeks passed in which the elephants were missing from performance, followed by another period of passivity.

This lasted, however, only until the show reached Bakersfield, California, and a canvasman chased a frightened rabbit, which had bobbed up about the show grounds, under the side walling and into the menagerie tent. The rabbit went out the other side of the tent. So did twelve of the parade elephants, wrecking everything from the menagerie to the sideshow, and heading for an irrigation canal at the other end of the lot. Here they were dragged from the water, the parade paraphernalia muddy and ruined, and brought back to the picket line once more, where they remained peaceful for a whole twenty-four hours. The next day, at Santa Barbara, an agitator chirruped, the queer, almost bird-like call which precedes a panic, and away they all went again! Some chose town and the wrecking of fences and small buildings. Others made the outer circle, disrupting the garden hopes of residents for weeks to come. Two more made for the fish market and ruined it. Another struck an automobile, wrecking it and injuring two persons. The remaining six of the runaways, smelling the open water, made for the bay and hopelessly mired themselves in the salt marshes, with the result that forty horses and nearly three thousand feet of rope were required to pull each of them from the mud.