Billy Whiskers Out for Fun

by Frances Trego Montgomery

The Elephant’s Story

“Dear friends, I am about to tell you not only the story of my life which will seem a long one to you, as I am in my two hundred and fiftieth year, but many things about elephants. As this is to be a Club not only for amusement, but for education as well, I hope you will bear with me if I seem tedious. It is astonishing how little any of us know of the lives and habits of our friends in their free and native state in the countries where they live so far away from us. All we know of them is just what we see of them day by day in the circus, so in my talk to-night I will try to tell you as much as I can about elephants, leaving out all unnecessary details.

“The first thing of importance in my life I remember distinctly was walking between my father and mother (two magnificent looking animals) behind a herd of nine elephants in a wonderful, huge, beautiful forest in Siam, a country in Southern Asia bordering on the Indian Ocean. While walking along I was wondering how the big trees five and six feet in diameter get there with their long limbs and good tasting leaves. For while I was only a baby elephant three or four months of age, I distinctly remember admiring the many different colored and shaped flowers that bloomed on the trailing vines and seemed to festoon themselves everywhere. But beautiful and sweet smelling as the flowers on these vines were, my father and mother did not appreciate them for they tore them rudely aside as the ropelike festoons hindered their progress through the jungle. I have often heard my father complain to my mother that these vines and the sharp thorns on the thorn bushes, with the rotting logs under one’s feet, quite spoiled all the pleasure of walking in the jungle, and he would greatly prefer walking on the plains if it were not for the broiling hot sun and no trees to shade one.

“Just then a loud trumpeting was heard from the leader of the herd away ahead to warn the herd that there were hunters in sight looking for them. Quick as a flash my father pointed with his trunk to a thick, dark clump of trees and told my mother to take me and hide there while he went to reconnoiter. All elephants are very brave when their young are attacked and will defend them with their lives. The male elephants always try to protect the females and young by keeping them in the rear of the herd when on the move, while they march ahead.

“My mother and I were scarcely concealed behind the big trees, drooping vines and low bushes when I saw a tall, slender native with only a breech cloth round his loins push his head through the bushes close beside the place where we had been standing when the leader trumpeted his warning. This man held in one hand a long spear with a sharp arrowhead top, and a coiled rope in the other. And I heard my mother give a frightened sigh and say to herself: ‘The king’s head elephant hunter! He has been on our track for days. We surely are lost for he always gets his prey. He has captured four of our most splendid elephants recently.’

“At that moment the man happened to cast his eyes down and I saw a slow, cruel smile of triumph spread over his face as his big red lips opened and disclosed his sharp, white teeth. He had discovered our footprints in the soft mud at his feet. Looking around quickly in all directions and peering into the bushes and dark places in the forest, I felt he must see us, he looked so straight in our direction. Then he drew himself to his full height and sniffed the air, and again that cruel, triumphant smile lit his jaw. My mother, who was watching him as closely as I, drew in a frightened breath and whispered to me: ‘He has scented us! We are lost! But he may pass us by. Don’t move a muscle or take a deep breath.’

“Closely following the tracks, nearer and nearer he drew to us without stopping until he came to the place where my father’s tracks left ours and went north. Here the man hesitated and looked closely as if to decide which of the tracks to follow. Then he lay flat on the ground with his ear close to it and listened, and when he got up he had another of his hateful smiles on his face, straightened himself and again sniffing the air, he started and came straight as an arrow to the place where we were hiding. But as he separated the bushes behind which we were standing, my mother stretched out her trunk, caught him around the neck and threw him over her head. I heard him go crashing between the big limbs of the trees and fall to the ground.

“‘There, he is done for,’ said my mother, ‘but it was a close call. His friends, if they ever do find him, will discover him dead from a broken neck.’

“Just then she gave a groan of pain and sank to the ground, but as she fell she sent out an agonizing trumpet of pain and warning to my father and the herd. By a miracle the man’s neck had not been broken and on regaining his feet he had thrown his sharp, murderous spear at her and it had penetrated her back in a tender part and killed her.