The most exasperating thing about these corral murders is the cunning treachery of the murderers. Here is another typical case: For three years a dainty little male Osceola deer from Florida was as gentle as a fawn and as harmless as a dove. But one crisp morning Keeper Quinn, to whom every doe in his charge is like a foster-daughter, was horrified at finding blood on the absurd little antlers of the Osceola pet. One of the females lay dead in a dark corner where she had been murdered during the night; and this with another and older buck in the same corral which might fairly have been regarded as an offensive rival.
The desire to murder for the sake of killing is born in some carnivorous animals, and by others it is achieved. Among the largest and finest of the felines, the lions and tigers, midnight murders very rarely occur. We never have known one. Individual dislike is shown boldly and openly, and we are given a fair chance to prevent fatalities. Among the lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and pumas of the New York Zoological Park, there has been but one murder. That was the crime of Lopez, the big jaguar, who richly deserved instant death as a punishment. It was one of the most cunning crimes I have ever seen among wild animals, and is now historic.
For a year Lopez pretended, ostentatiously, to be a good- natured animal! Twenty times at least he acted the part of a playful pet, inviting me to reach in and stroke him. At last we decided to give him a cage-mate, and a fine adult female jaguar was purchased. The animals actually tried to caress each other through the bars, and the big male completely deceived us, one and all.
At the end of two days it was considered safe to permit the female jaguar to enter the cage of Lopez. She was just as much deceived as we were. An animal that is afraid always leaves its traveling- cage slowly and unwillingly, or refuses to leave it at all. When the two sets of doors were opened, the female joyously walked into the cage of her treacherous admirer. In an instant, Lopez rushed upon her, seized her whole neck in his powerful jaws, and crushed her cervical vertebrae by his awful bite. We beat him over the head; we spiked him; we even tried to brain him; but he held her, as a bull-dog would hold a cat, until she was dead. He had determined to murder her, but had cunningly concealed his purpose until his victim was fully in his power.
Bears usually fight "on the square," openly and above-board, rarely committing foul murder. If one bear hates another, he attacks at the very first opportunity, He does not cunningly wait to catch the offender at a disadvantage and beyond the possibility of rescue. Sometimes a captive bear kills a cage-mate or mauls a keeper, but not by the sneaking methods of the human assassin who shoots in the dark and runs away.
I do not count the bear as a common criminal, even though at rare intervals he kills a cage-mate smaller and weaker than himself. One killing of that kind, done by Cinnamon Jim to a small black bear that had annoyed him beyond all endurance, was inflicted as a legitimate punishment, and was so recorded. The attack of two large bears, a Syrian and a sloth bear, upon a small Japanese black bear, in which the big pair deliberately attempted to disembowel the small victim, biting him only in the abdomen, always has been a puzzle to me. I cannot fathom the idea which possessed those two ursine minds; but I have no doubt that some of the book-making men who read the minds of wild animals as if they were open books could tell me all about it.
On the ice-pack in front of his stone hut at the north end of the Franz Josef Archipelago Nansen saw an occurrence that was plain murder. A large male polar bear feeding upon a dead walrus was approached across the ice-pack by two polar-bear cubs. The gorging male immediately stopped feeding and rushed toward the small intruders. They turned and fled wildly; but the villain pursued them, far out upon the ice. He overtook them, killed both, and then serenely returned to his solitary feast.
In February, 1907, a tragedy occurred in the Zoological Park which was a close parallel of the Lopez murder. It was a case in which my only crumb of satisfaction was in my ability to say, "I told you so,"—than which no consolation can be more barren.
For seven years there had lived together in the great polar bears' den of the Zoological Park two full-grown, very large and fine polar bears. They came from William Hagenbeck's great group, and both were males. Their rough-and-tumble wrestling, both in the swimming pool and out of it, was a sight of almost perennial interest; and while their biting and boxing was of the roughest character, and frequently drew blood, they never got angry, and never had a real fight.
In the autumn of 1906 one of the animals sickened and died, and presently the impression prevailed that the survivor was lonesome. The desirability of introducing a female companion was spoken of, but I was afraid to try the experiment.