The Training of Wild Animals

by Frank Charles Bostock

I was once working with a group of lions at Indianapolis, when an incident occurred which will show how one small playful action on the part of a wild animal may sometimes lead to serious results. I was in the training-school when Young Wallace, one of my fiercest lions, but for whom I had a great affection, which, in a way, he appeared to return, jumped from his pedestal for a piece of meat which I had thrown on the floor. While eating the meat, I stood watching him, and thoughtlessly tapping the leather leg of my training-boot with my whip.

Wallace had been accustomed to playing with the whip, and to feel the gentle stroking of it down the muscles of his back. One of the tricks which he had been taught was to ask for the stroking by reaching for the whip with his paw when it was held suspended over him. A lion’s paw is no plaything. A cat’s paw, with its sharp, incisive claws hidden in the velvet, is sometimes a fierce and effective weapon. Imagine a cat’s paw enlarged twenty times, propelled with a proportionate increase of muscular energy, and with the same lightning-like rapidity, and you can gather some little idea of what a lion’s paw means when it strikes.

In this instance, Wallace struck at me merely in play and with little of the strength that he would have displayed in a wilful attack. The stroke was a part of the trick he was used to, and he made it with good animal intention, but it was none the less direful. The claws fastened deep into the fleshy part of my leg, through boot and underclothing, and there stuck. A lion’s claws would not be nearly so dangerous were they sharp and straight; but they have a sharp curve, and go in like a cant-hook, penetrating the flesh at an acute angle. The lion has not the sense to draw them out, as they went in, by the curving process, but pulls them straight out.

Wallace found his claws in farther than he intended, and, slightly frightened, promptly drew them out, not backward but forward. Needless to say, with them came a good-sized piece of flesh, which caused me excruciating pain.

Painful as it was, I did not move, knowing as I did that to show any signs of fear or trepidation would cause alarm, and, probably, not only be the spoiling of the lion, but the signal for an attack. But when a second or two had elapsed, and Wallace had returned to eating his meat, I at once ordered the animals back to their cages, and in this way Wallace, picking up the remains of his meat and taking them with him, was soon in his cage again, without having been given time or opportunity to realize that he had hurt his trainer or drawn blood—two things which always have bad effects on animals.

A great many accidents occur, and always will occur, either through carelessness or through mistakes on the part of those in attendance on the animals. It is not only the trainers who suffer from the claws and teeth of the animals: there are numerous other men and boys in an exhibition who are constantly running into danger, very often when there is not the slightest occasion for their doing so.

The duties of these attendants are numerous. Besides helping to keep the animals and cages clean, they have to attend to watering the animals, see that no bones or other small articles are in the cages,—for the smallest object, no matter how worthless, may be the means of leading two animals to quarrel for its possession,—and do a hundred and one other things which crop up from day to day.

Many of these attendants also help the trainers, which is almost as dangerous as the duties of the trainer himself. Properties and other things have to be passed in to the trainer during the rehearsals and performances, doors and gates have to be opened and fastened after them, and there is always the possibility that an animal may turn and spring on the attendant, although with trained animals this rarely happens. It is nothing for a man to close a door, but if an animal springs back at it, it would require more than the strength of six to do so.

An attendant was holding the door open, after a performance, for some bears to return to their cages. All but one bear—a big Kadiak—had gone quietly in, when, without the least warning, the bear turned, inserted his claws round the edge of the door, tearing it out of the hands of the attendant, and in a second had him down. In spite of the promptest assistance given by Mr. Stevenson, who risked his life in so doing, the man’s arm was terribly torn, and it was months before he was able to leave the hospital. To this day his arm has remained stiff, and he can only hold it in an unnatural way.

A terrible accident took place entirely through a mistake on the part of an employee. Albert Neilson by name and a good, hard-working young fellow, and a great favorite with the show, nicknamed “Curly,” was sent one morning with some food in a basket to feed some young lion cubs. The cubs were in a cage next to Rajah, the big tiger. All the employees had been repeatedly warned about taking care in going anywhere near this tiger—a special little trick of his being to feign sleep and then suddenly throw out a paw with claws extended.