LIONS ’N’ TIGERS ’N’ EVERYTHINGCHAPTER IINSIDE THE TRAINING DEN
LIONS ’N’ TIGERS ’N’ EVERYTHING
I REMEMBER, rather distinctly, the first time I ever went into the steel arena. I was to meet three lions and an equal number of tigers, all full grown, and unintroduced, so far, to any one but their original trainer. Naturally, I believed I knew beforehand just about what would happen.
Outside the arena, on one side, would be three or four men with long iron rods, the points of which were heated white hot,—sufficient to halt any beast in the attack. On the other side would be an equal number of attendants, equipped with an invention which I never had seen, but which I knew all about, a thing called an “electric prod rod,” coupled up with the electric light wires and capable of spitting thousands of volts of electricity at the lion or tiger which might seek to devour me. I, personally, would have two revolvers, one loaded with blank cartridges, for use during the ordinarycourse of the visit and to cow the beasts into a knowledge that I was their superior; the other equipped with steel-jacketed bullets in case of a real emergency.
There was a certain amount of foundation for my beliefs. Back in childhood days, when I had been a runaway clown with a small, tatterdemalion circus, the menagerie had consisted of one lion, vicious to the extreme and permanently blinded by blows from a leaden-tipped whip, and three scarred and scurvy-appearing leopards which hated humans with enthusiastic passion, and which eventually accomplished their much desired ambition of killing the trainer who had beaten them daily for years. From that menagerie experience I knew that all animals were beaten unmercifully, that they were burned and tortured and shot, and that the training of any jungle animal could be carried out in only one way—that of breaking the spirit of the beast and holding it in a constant subjection of fear. But—
Only one man was in the menagerie house of the circus winter quarters when I entered—the trainer. The steel arena stood, already erected, in the center of the big building, but I looked in vain for the attendants with the electric prod rods, and the men with the white-hot irons. As for the trainer himself, I failed to notice any bulges in his pockets which might denote revolvers; in fact, he carriednothing except two cheap, innocent-appearing buggy whips. One of these he handed me in nonchalant style, then motioned toward the arena.
“All right,” he ordered, pulling back the steel door, “get in.”
“Get in?” Everything was all wrong, and I knew it. “Where are the animal men?”
“Over at the cookhouse, eating dinner. I’ll let the cats into the chute. Go ahead inside so I can strap the door.”
“But—”
“I’ll come in after I’ve let the cats through from the permanent cages. I want you in there first, though, so they can see you the minute they start into the chute. Then you won’t surprise ’em, see, and scare ’em. Just stand still in the center as they come in. If any of ’em get excited, just say ‘seats!’ in a good, strong voice, and tap ’em with that buggy whip. By that time I’ll be in there.”
“But where’s my gun? And aren’t we going to have any of the men around with hot irons or electric prods—”
“Electric what?” The trainer cocked his head.
“Electric prod rods—you know, that throw electricity.”
“Cut the comedy,” came briefly; “you’ve been readin’ them Fred Fearnot stories! Nope,” he continued, “there ain’t going to be any hot irons or electric prods, whatever they are, or nothin’. Justyou an’ me an’ the cats an’ a couple of buggy whips!”
Whereupon, somewhat dazed, I allowed myself to be shunted into the arena. The door was closed behind me—and strapped. Shorty, the animal trainer went to the line of permanent cages, shifted a few doors, then opened the one leading to the chute. A tiger traveled slowly toward me, while I juggled myself in my shoes, and wondered why the buggy whip had suddenly become so slippery in my clenched hand. While this was happening, the Bengal looked me over, dismissed me with a mild hiss, and walked to the pedestal. Then, almost before I knew it, the den was occupied by three tigers and three lions, none of which had done anything more than greet me with a perfunctory hiss as they entered! Already Shorty was unstrapping the door, himself to enter the den. Then, one by one, the animals went through their routine, roaring and bellowing and clawing at Shorty, but paying no attention whatever to me!
“Part of the act,” explained the little trainer as he came beside me for a moment, “trained ’em that way. Audience likes to see cats act vicious, like they was going to eat up their trainer. But a lot of it’s bunk. Just for instance—”
Then he turned to the lion which had fought him the hardest.
“Meo-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!” he said.
“Meo-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!” answered the lion, somewhat after the fashion of an overgrown house cat.
Following which, a loose purring issued from Shorty’s lips, to be echoed by the tigers.
“That’s their pay!” came laconically as the trainer walked to the chute. Then, “All right, Kids! Work’s over!”
Whereupon the great cats bounded through the doors for their permanent cages again, and still somewhat hazy, I left the steel arena. Everything had gone wrong! There had been no firing of a revolver, no lashing of steel-tipped whips; something radical had happened since the old days when Pop Jensen had beaten those three leopards about on the Old Clattertrap Shows. Either that or Pop Jensen had been an exception!
Since that first introduction, I’ve learned a few things about animals. A great many of these little facts have been gained by personal visits, often in as narrow a space as an eight-foot permanent cage in which the other occupant was anything from a leopard to a lion. And I’ve learned incidentally that Pop Jensen wasn’t an exception. He just belonged to another day, that is all, and his day is past. The animal trainer of the present is a different sort, with a different attitude toward the beasts under his control, different theories, different methods, and different ideas. Ask a present-day trainerabout hot irons and all you’ll gain is a blank look. He wouldn’t know how to use them, and if he did, he wouldn’t admit it. He wants to hold his job, and with present-day circuses; hot irons or anything like them are barred. All for one very simple reason besides the humanitarian qualities. Jungle animals cost about eight times as much to-day as they did twenty or twenty-five years ago. No circus owner is going to mar a thousand-dollar bill if he can help it—and hot irons produce scars.
Which represents the business side of animal training as it exists to-day. There are two reasons; one being that the whole fabric of the circus business had changed in the last score of years from the low-browed “grifting” owner and his “grifting,” thieving, fighting personnel to a new generation of men who have higher ideals and who have realized that the circus is as much of an institution as a dry-goods store or the post-office department.
IN THE STEEL ARENAIN THE STEEL ARENA.
IN THE STEEL ARENA.
IN THE STEEL ARENA.
A TIGER BEING TRAINED TO RIDE HORSEBACKA TIGER BEING TRAINED TO RIDE HORSEBACK.
A TIGER BEING TRAINED TO RIDE HORSEBACK.
A TIGER BEING TRAINED TO RIDE HORSEBACK.
Where the canvasmen and “roughnecks” and “razorbacks,” the laborers of the circus, once were forced to sleep beneath the wagons, or at best upon makeshift bunks, they now have sanitary berths, car porters, and sheets and pillow cases. Where they once ate the left-overs of stores; stale bread, old meat, and “puffed” canned goods, they now have food that is far better than that served in the United States Army. Where they formerly were the victims of hundred per cent. loan sharks, feedingupon them like so many human leeches; forcing them to pay double prices for every commodity and bit of clothing, and practically at the mercy of brutal bosses, their lot has been bettered until there is now at least one circus where the lot superintendent never allows his men to be commanded without a prefix unknown in a great many business institutions. He doesn’t swear at them, for instance, when he orders the tents strengthened against a possible blow. Instead, it is:
“All right,gentlemen, take up them guy ropes!”
When the weather is foul, and the circus lot is hip-deep in mud, when men have struggled to their utmost and can go no longer on their own power, he doesn’t brace them with bootleg whisky. Instead, he keeps a man on the pay roll whose job is to laugh and sing in such times as this—the superintendent knowing full well that one laugh begets another, that singing engenders singing, and that the psychological value of that laughing man is worth barrels of booze. It has saved the show more times than one!
Just as conditions have improved with the human personnel of the circus, so have they progressed in the menagerie. The circus animal trainer of to-day is not chosen for his brutality, or his cunning, or his so-called bravery. He is hired because he has studied and knows animals—even to talking their various “languages!” There are few real animaltrainers who cannot gain an answer from their charges, talking to them as the ordinary person talks to a dog and receiving as intelligent attention. It is by this method that cat animals are trained for the most part, it being about the only way, outside of catnip, in which they can be rewarded.
In that last word comes the whole explanation of the theory of present-day animal training, a theory of rewards. Animal men have learned that the brute isn’t any different from the human; the surest way to make him work is to pay him for his trouble. In the steel arena to-day, the same fundamentals exist as in any big factory, or business house, or office. The animals are just so many hired hands. When they do their work, they get their pay envelope—and they know it. Beyond this lies, however, another fundamental principle, by which in the last score or so of years the whole animal-training system has been revolutionized. The present-day trainer doesn’t cow the animal or make it afraid of him. On the contrary, the first thing he does is to conquer all fear and make friends with the beast!
A study of jungle animals has taught him that they exist through fear; that the elephant fears, and therefore hates the chimpanzee, the gorilla and any other member of the big ape tribes that can attack from above, and therefore, simply through instinct, will kill any of these beasts at the firstopportunity. In like manner does the hyena or the zebra fear the lion, the tiger fear the elephant, the leopard fear the python. It has taken little deduction to find that with this fear, hatred is inevitably linked, and that if an animal fears a trainer, it also hates him and will “get” him at the first opportunity. Therefore, the first thing to be eliminated is not fear on the part of the trainer, but on the part of the animal! I am no animal trainer. Yet, as I say, I’ve occupied some mighty close quarters with every form of jungle beast. Nor was it bravery. It was simply because I knew the great cats wouldn’t be afraid of me, and that, having nothing to fear, they would simply ignore me. Which happened.
Perhaps the best example of the change in training tactics lies in the story of a soft-hearted, millionaire circus owner who is somewhat of a crank about his animals being well treated. One day, several years ago, we happened to be together at a vaudeville theater, in which an old-time trainer was exhibiting a supposed “trained” monkey band. The audience seemed to enjoy the affair; but there were two who didn’t. All for the reason that we could see the cruelty of it.
The unfortunate monkeys were tied to their chairs. To their arms were attached invisible piano wires which ran to a succession of pulleys above and thence to the wings, where they werepulled and jerked by an assistant to create the illusion that the beasts were obeying commands. By an elaborate network of wires, the monkeys were made to raise horns, which also were tied to their hands, and apparently play them. Time after time, as he watched, the circus owner snorted his displeasure, and, at last, the act finished, rose from his chair and sought the stage entrance.
“Swell act you got!” he announced to the owner. “What do you want for it? You know, I own a circus; I’d kind of like to have that layout in the kid show.”
It was the beginning of a series of bickerings, which ended in the purchase of the act—why, I could not quite understand. So I asked the reason. The eccentric little owner waved a hand.
“Going to have it in my show.”
“But with those wires—that’s torture, Boss!”
“Now, nix, Kid! Nix. Wait till I’ve got my bill of sale.”
Incidentally, when he received that, the new owner of the monkey band gave to the old-time trainer a tongue lashing as artistic as anything I ever heard, a little masterpiece on cruelty, on the cowardice of the human, and on decency in general. Following which, he bundled up his newly purchased monkeys, together with the properties which went with the act, and took them to winter quarters.
The next day I went out there with him. The monkeys were in their chairs, apparently waiting for something exceedingly important. No wires were visible. At a signal, an attendant ran forward with a small table, upon which were heaped the band instruments which at one time had represented so much torture to the little prisoners. Instantly there was chattering and excitement. The simians leaped from their chairs, scrambled toward the table, grasped a band instrument apiece and ran back to their places, each holding the musical apparatus tight to his lips and producing faint sounds that bore the resemblance of music! Yet the cruelty was gone! The wires had vanished! The monkeys were doing all this of their own accord and actually taking a delight in it! Like a pleased boy, the little circus owner walked to one of the simians and, against the monkey’s squealing protests, took away his horn.
“There,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, “that’s all you have to do.”
The mouthpiece of the horn had been refashioned overnight. Extending slightly outward from the interior was a metal standard bearing a thin reed; which would sound at the slightest suction, while just beyond this, at a point which would necessitate some effort on the part of the monkey to reach it, was an ordinary piece of old-fashioned, striped stick candy! When the monkeysucked on the candy, the reed sounded. By such a simple method had cruelty been changed to pleasure!
The same thing holds true for practically every other animal act. Instead of making animals pretend to work because they are afraid, they merely work for wages now. For years, in the old days, trainers had kicked and mauled and beaten a slow-thinking, lunk-headed hippopotamus in an effort to make him perform. It was impossible. The hip neither fought nor obeyed. It didn’t have enough sense to know that it could escape punishment by doing a few tricks. Then, with the coming of the newer régime into the circus business, the effort was discontinued. For years the big river hog merely wallowed in his trough. Then, one day, an animal trainer slanted his head and stood for a long time in thought.
“Believe I’ll work that hip,” he announced. And a week later, the miracle happened!
“Ladies-s-s-s-s-s and gentlemen-n-n-n” came the bawling outcry of the official announcer, “I take great pleasuah in announcing to you a featuah not on the program, a race between a swift-footed human being-g-g-g and a real, living, breathing hippopotamus-s-s, or sweating be-hemoth of Holy Writ. Wa-a-a-tch them!”
Into the hippodrome track from the menagerie connection came the trainer, running at a fair gait,while striving his best, seemingly, to outpace him, was a goggle-eyed hippopotamus, trotting as swiftly as his wobbly avoirdupois would permit. All the way around they went, the hippopotamus gaining for an instant, then the trainer taking the lead again, finally passing once more into the menagerie. The audience applauded delightedly. It was the first time it ever had seen a trained hippopotamus. Nor had it noticed the fact that, about fifty yards in advance of the racing pair, was a menagerie attendant, also running. The important thing about this person was that he carried a bucket of bran mash, and the hippopotamus knew that it was for him! He wasn’t racing the trainer, he was merely following a good meal; the old, old story of the donkey and the ear of corn!
Likewise the pig which you’ve seen squealing in the wake of the clown in the circus. The secret? Simply that His Hoglets has been taken from his mother at birth and raised on a bottle. His feeding has been timed so that it comes during circus hours. The pig follows the clown because he knows he’s going to get a square meal. At certain places in the circuit of the big top the clown pauses and gives him a few nips from the bottle. Then he goes on again and the pig runs squealing after. Simple, isn’t it?
In the same manner is the “follow goose” trained. The person he trails has food, and the goose knowshe’s going to get it. Likewise the pigs which you’ve seen “shooting the chutes.”
A pig isn’t supposed to have much intelligence. Perhaps he hasn’t—but you can have a trained-pig act all your own very easily.
Simply build a pen leading to a set of stairs which lead in turn to a chute, the chute traveling down into another closely netted enclosure. In this enclosure put a bucket of favorite pig food. Then turn the hogs loose and let then make their own deductions.
First of all, the pigs will try to reach the food by going through the netting. That’s impossible. So at last they turn to the runway, go up the steps, hesitate a long while, then finally slide down the chute and get what they’re after. Then—here’s the strange part of it: after a week or so, remove the food. The pigs will keep on shooting the chutes just the same. By some strange form of animal reasoning, the pleasure of food has become associated with that exercise of sliding down that incline. Like a dog that gains a form of stomachic satisfaction from the sight of food, so do the pigs derive a certain amount of pleasure from going where the food ought to be! And they’ll shoot the chutes for you as often as you please. Particularly if you feed them directly after it’s done!
In fact, the system of rewards and payment for work holds true through every form of trainedanimal life. Sugar for dogs, carrots for elephants, fish for seals, stale bread for the polar bears, a bit of honey or candy for the ordinary species of bear, pieces of apple or lumps of sugar for horses; every animal has his reward, for which he’ll work a hundred times harder than ever he did in the old and almost obsolete days of fear. Even lions, tigers and leopards have their likes, but with them the payment comes in a different fashion.
Jungle cats are primeval in their instincts. They’re unable to control themselves at the sight of food, and a few strips of meat distributed in the training den might lead to a fight. Therefore the new style of trainer has a different method. He talks to the cats!
Nor is that so difficult as it sounds. A short association with animals and one easily can learn the particular intonation by which they express pleasure. With the lion, this takes form in a long drawn-out meow of satisfaction; with the leopard and the tiger it is evinced by purring, as with house cats. The trainer simply practices an imitation of these sounds until he masters them, with the result that he is almost invariably answered by the beast when he emits them! The animal seems to understand that the trainer is seeking to convey the fact that he is pleased, and the beast appears pleased also. As to the reward extraordinary, there is the joy of joys—catnip!
To a house cat, catnip is a thing of ecstasy. To a jungle cat it holds as much allurement as morphine to a dope user, or whisky to a drunkard. A catnip ball and the world immediately becomes rosy; the great cats roll in it, toss it about their cages, purr and arch their backs, all in a perfect frenzy of delight. Therefore, when they do their work, they get their catnip. When they don’t work they’re simply docked their week’s wages; that’s all.
Old principles, naturally, and perhaps all the more efficacious for their age. In fact, there is one circus in the West which regularly depends upon this age-worn idea of food to save itself in wet weather. It possesses one of the largest and strongest elephants existent in the United States, an animal capable of pulling any of the show’s wagons from hub-deep mud with but little effort. There is only one trouble. When Nature made that elephant, it put concrete where the brains should be. Training is next to impossible. The elephant simply doesn’t seem able to assimilate a command. Which worries the circus not at all.
When bad weather comes, they simply bring out “Old Bonehead” and hitch him with a rope harness to whichever wagon happens to be stuck. Then a workman takes his position slightly in front of the beast, with a bucketful of carrots, and practices a little animal Coueism. He holds out a carrot.The elephant reaches for it but can’t quite achieve his object. Whereupon he takes a step forward—and drags the wagon with him. Which forms the end of that particular vehicle’s troubles. He is unhitched and taken to the next scene of difficulty. For every wagon a carrot, and the circus counts it rather cheap motive power at that!
However, the training of animals does not mean that they’re simply given food, in return for which, by some magical process, they realize that they are to do certain work. Far from it. It is a long, patient progress, in which the trainer, if he is a good one, grits his teeth to hold his temper and smiles many and many a time when he would like to swear. He has three jobs which must be synchronized into one objective—to teach the animal that there is nothing to fear from this strange human who has suddenly made his entry into the beast’s life, to plant certain routines into the beast’s mind, and to place there at the same time the knowledge that, for doing these things, the animal is to be rewarded. But there is this consolation: once a single trick is learned, the whole avenue is unlocked; and the way to other stunts made easier. Here and here alone is the whip used, but for the most part it is only the light, cheap affair which once adorned that ancient vehicle, the buggy.
The lessons start in much the same manner inwhich those of a human child begin; the primary object being to accustom the charges to the fact that they are going to school. And so the lion tamer merely takes his position in the center of the arena and calls for the attendants to release the animals from their permanent cages.
Often the lesson consists of nothing more than that. The beasts have become accustomed to mankind through seeing them every day in the menagerie and through being fed by them. Therefore they catalogue them as merely other animals which are harmless and upon which the beasts themselves depend for a livelihood. Again is the road to the brain opened through the path to the stomach!
However, there also are times when the cats seem to realize that they no longer are protected by intervening bars, and the old instincts of fright and self-preservation overcome them. One by one they attempt to rush their trainer. The answer is a swift, accurately placed blow of the whip, usually on the nostrils. In force it corresponds to a sharp slap on the lips, such as happens to more than one child, stinging it for the moment and causing it to recoil. Unless the beast is intractable, an inbred or a “bad actor,” about two of these blows are sufficient to teach the animal its first combined lesson: that a whip hurts, that the man in the arena commands that whip but, most important of all, he uses it only as a means of self-protection.The good trainer only strikes an animal to break up an attack; he has a specified task, to make the beast respect the whip, but not to fear it. After the first few minutes, the trainer can sit down in the center of the arena and wait in peace. His charges have ceased attacking and now are merely roaming the big enclosure, accustoming themselves to the larger space of their quarters and assuring themselves that they have nothing to fear. So ends the first lesson.
After which comes the second and most important period of all. The animal already has learned three things, that the trainer will not hurt him unless the animal tries to hurt the trainer, that the whip is something that can sting and it is best to keep away from it, and that there will be a reward for doing what the trainer desires, and that, taken all in all, he’s a pretty good sort of a being after all. Therefore, the trainer selects one beast at a time and falls into a routine. He cracks his whip just behind the beast, not striking the animal, but close enough to make his charge move away from it. At the same time, he keeps repeating his rote:
“Seats, Rajah! Seats—seats!”
Which the beast doesn’t understand at all. But by “crowding,” by the constant repetition of that command, and by desisting with the whip when the animal moves in the right direction and crackingit to hold him from the wrong course, the trainer gradually works the cat to its pedestal. Once this lesson is implanted in the mind of the beast, the whole door to a trained act is unlocked, for everything else is accomplished in the same manner.
More than once I have happened into a menagerie house to find the arena full of cat animals and a trainer seemingly nowhere about. The animals were doing as they pleased, some lolling in the spots of sunlight which came from the high windows, others playing, still others merely pacing. It was as though a recess had been called at school and the teacher had departed. Instead, however, he was hiding!
Hiding and watching the animals with hawk-like eagerness, as, left to themselves, they followed the dictates of their own likes and dislikes. It was not a recess; on the contrary, it was one of the most important features of present-day animal training, that of allowing the animals themselves to choose their own acts! In other words, the trainer was playing the part of a hidden observer, watching his tawny charges, and from his unseen point of vantage learning their true natures and the things which they liked best to do.
Some animals are natural climbers and balancers; others are not. Weeks could be wasted in an effort to teach a beast to walk a tightrope, for instance, when the power of balance simply was notin his brain. So the trainer of to-day, being a believer in efficiency, allows his animals to volunteer for the various services of the performing arena. During the recess time, in which the animals are left to their own resources, their every mannerism is catalogued. In their play, for instance, it may be found that two lions or two tigers will box each other in mock fighting; two pals of the feline race that have selected each other as playmates. Naturally, there is fierce growling and a sprinkling of flying fur. The trainer notes it all, and when the show goes on the road, the audience gets a thrill out of two great cats which leap at each other in a seeming battle of death. For the trainer has taken advantage of this play instinct and made it a part of the show. The audience doesn’t know that the big beasts are growling and hissing in good humor, and wouldn’t believe it if the trainer announced the fact.
Another animal will be found to have a love for climbing and for balancing himself about the thin rails of the arena. This is the beast which is turned into the “tightrope walking tiger” or the “Leonine Blondin.” Another will be a humorist, cavorting about in comical fashion, and he becomes the “only-y-y-y, living-g-g-g, breathing-g-g-g cat clown in existence.” In fact, the animal trainer has learned one great truth, that animals have tempers, likes, dislikes, moods, frailties and mannerismsjust as a human has them, and that the easiest way to present a pleasing act is to take advantage of the natural “histrionic talent” of the beast. For instance, on one of the big shows was an “untamable lion.” At the very sight of the trainer, he would hiss and claw and roar and appear obsessed with a mad desire to eat that trainer alive at the first opportunity. His act was a constant thing of cracking whips, of shouts, of barking revolver shots, and of scurrying attendants outside the arena, on the alert every instant for the leap of death. Old Duke, to tell the truth, seemed one of the fiercest beasts that ever went into a steel arena. His every mannerism carried the hint of death; he hated humans; you could see the malevolent glare in his eyes, the deadly threat of naked teeth, the—
By the way, did you ever play with a dog that mocked fierceness? A dog that growled and barked and pretended every moment that he was going to take off an arm or a leg, while you, in turn, pretended just as hard as that you were fighting for your very life? Of course, I shouldn’t reveal circus secrets, but I once spent half an hour with Old Duke in a cage so small that he slapped me in the face with his tail every time he turned round, and I didn’t even have the customary buggy whip!
The explanation is simply the fact that it wasdiscovered early in Duke’s training days that he was an animal humorist. Pompous appearing, dignified in mien, yet possessed with a funny streak, which the trainer soon recognized and realized, Old Duke played his rôle so excellently that upon his death a short time ago, a large newspaper published an editorial regarding him, and the laugh that he, the lion, had on the “smart” human beings who had watched him!
“If Old Duke only had possessed a sleeve,” said the editorial, “he would have placed many a snicker in it during his long and useful show days. For Duke had a mission, that of showing at least a few persons who really understood him and who knew, that we who call ourselves humans are only super-egoists, that because we can talk, and build edifices and go scurrying about this ant hill we call life, we think we are the only beings existent who possess a brain. That was Duke’s mission, to prove, after all, that we are only wonderful because we think we are wonderful, that we believe animals are soulless things because we do not understand them. No doubt there are many Old Dukes in the animal kingdom, supposedly our inferiors, that go through life tickling our egoism, and quietly, to themselves, giving us the laugh!”
In the old days of animal training, Duke would have been just a lion doing routine things, because the trainers of those days didn’t know enough torealize that animals might possess individuality. But those days are gone. It is a different deal now; far more acts are suggested by the animals themselves than by any trainer. The man in circus demand is the person who knows enough to stand at one side and watch, then take advantage of what he has seen.
Which explains perhaps a sight many circus-goers have noticed—of a herd of young elephants romping in the mud of a show-lot, and an interested group of men standing at one side, cataloguing every move. Mud makes elephants actors. From a beginning of mud and rain come the balance artists of the elephant herd, the dancers, the “hootchie-kootchie” experts, and the comedians. All for the reason that mud to an elephant is like catnip to a lion or tiger. It is part of an elephant herd’s routine of health to send it forth into the mire and rain of a “wet lot” and let the members play like so many tremendous puppies. And while they play, the trainer observes.
No two do the same thing in the same way; the individuality is as marked as in the members of any human kindergarten class. The trainer therefore has simply to pick his “bulls” for the various things he wants them to do when they have graduated into performers, one to walk upon his hind legs, another to dance in the ring as he danced in the happiness of sticky mud, one more to sit on still another’shead, and so on throughout the routine. There is hardly an elephant act that has not been first done voluntarily at some time in the antics of a play-fest in the mud.
However, after learning an elephant’s aptitudes comes the real job, that of making him know that he is to do these tricks as a part of his livelihood, and to recognize them by cues. An elephant doesn’t measure his weight by pounds; he runs to tons, and to teach him the rudiments of his life-work under canvass is a matter of everything from blocks and tackle to lifting-cranes.
Combined with one ultra-essential point: the elimination of pain. There is no braver beast than an elephant, and no greater coward; no better friend and no worse enemy. Injure an elephant when he is a baby, combine the thought of pain with the idea of work, and some day it all will come back in a furious, thundering engine of destruction that not only wrecks the circus, but signs his own death warrant. Bad elephants must be killed; and when that happens a circus checks off anything from $4000 to $10,000 on the wrong side of the ledger.
Therefore, the early training of a pachyderm is a delicate affair. First of all, the student is led to the “class-room” accompanied by an older and more experienced “bull.” Then, while the new applicant for performing honors watches, the olderelephant is padded about the legs and tied; following which the blocks and tackles are pulled taut, causing the beast to lose its balance and fall on its side, the trainer meanwhile repeating and re-repeating the “lay-down” command. At the end of which the performer is allowed to rise and is given a carrot. Time after time is this done, while the student watches—especially that part where the feeding comes in. It all has its purpose—to attempt to fix in the new performer’s mind the fact that, in the first place, this schooling won’t hurt, and secondly that all a “bull” has to do to earn a nice, fresh carrot is to have a couple of ropes hooked to his legs and be pulled over on his side. So quick is the intelligence of some elephants that instances have been known of the beasts learning their primary lesson on the first attempt. Others, hampered by fear, have required a month.
In the same way is every other rudimentary trick taught. The elephant is shown how to stand on his head by having his trunk pulled under him and his hind legs raised. After which he receives carrots. The reverse system is used for teaching him “the hind-leg stand”—and again the carrots appear. After this, the block and tackle is not a necessity except as a means of support, while hitherto unused muscles are strengthened. The animal has learned his alphabet; now it is simply a matter of putting the letters together, the wordsthemselves being furnished largely by his own antics.
Incidentally, this new order of things in the training field has led to a different relationship between the man and the beast. There was a time when animals were only animals, to be taken from their cages, pushed through their tricks, then shunted back into their cages and forgotten. Things are different now. The average menagerie has become more of an animal hotel, with conveniences. The superintendent must be a person who has studied not only the beasts themselves, but their anatomy, in other words, a jungle veterinarian.
The boss of the circus menagerie of to-day doesn’t merely content himself with seeing that his charges are well fed. By a glance at the coat of a lion or tiger he can tell whether that beast has indigestion; ventilation is watched carefully to dispel the ammonia smell of the cat animals and thereby prevent headaches on the part of the beasts; teeth are pulled, ingrown toenails doctored, operations performed, and every disease from rickets to pneumonia treated and cured. And the fact that man at last has learned that beasts possess temperaments, individuality, emotions and a good many things that humans brag about has seemed to place them on a different plane. Where there once was cruelty there now is often affection,both on the part of the trainer, and also on that of the animal!
In the Al G. Barnes Circus, in California, for instance, is a great, sleek-muscled, four hundred-pound tiger, that is ever watching, watching, his eyes constantly on the crowds about his den, seeking but one person. At the sight of any blond-haired woman, he rises excitedly, hurries close to the bars, growling in gruff, yet pleased fashion. Then, with a second look, he turns and slumps to the floor again. It is not the person he seeks!
That tiger is a killer. He has murdered four other cat animals, two lions and two tigers, yet if the woman he awaits should appear, she could tie a cord string about his neck and lead him around the tent in perfect safety.
He is one of the few wrestling tigers in captivity. Twice a day for two years, in the steel arena, his claws unguarded, his great jaws unmuzzled, this four hundred-pound Bengal wrestled in almost human fashion with Mabel Stark, the woman who had raised him from cubhood, and whom he loved with a genuine affection. Once, in a motion picture, when it was necessary for the “double” of the heroine to appear as though she were almost killed by a tiger, Mabel Stark took the job. The tiger leaped and knocked her down. Then, while the cameras ground, he seemingly crushed her skull in his giant jaws. Yet those who watched saw thatthose jaws were closed so carefully, in spite of the swiftness of their action, that they barely dishevelled the trainer’s hair.
There came the time when Mabel Stark was called away to become one of the featured trainers for the combined Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey Circus, the biggest circus of them all. Mabel Stark is far better known to-day than she was back in the days with Al G. Barnes. But with the circus she left behind, that tiger still watches, still waits and seeks constantly for one woman out of the crowds which daily throng through the menagerie, rising with hope, then dropping forlornly again to the floor, while, in the midst of her greater fame, Mabel Stark smiles and sighs, and talks of how wonderful it would be if she could only have her wrestling tiger!
It’s only one instance of hundreds. Up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, at the winter quarters of the Barnum show, lives Captain “Dutch” Ricardo, “the man of a thousand scars.” There was a time when they called “Cap” the biggest fool in the animal business—for “Cap” was one of the pioneers of the newer methods of animal training. It was he, for instance, who once walked into the office of H. H. Tammen, then owner of the Sells-Floto Circus, and made him a proposition.
“I understand,” he said, “that you’ve got a bunch of bad cats. Been beaten, ain’t they?”
“Yep,” came the answer. “Just about ruined too. That idiot I had got ’em so flighty they’ll kill anybody that goes into the arena with ’em.”
“I’ll fix ’em up for you,” announced “Cap,” laconically. “Say the word and I’ll go out there and start in on ’em.”
The circus owner swallowed quickly then reached for a liability contract.
“Er—just sign this first,” he announced, and “Cap” signed, releasing the circus from any possible damages for his death. Then together they went to winter quarters, Ricardo to make his first effort at training, Tammen to see a new trainer get killed.
“Want any help?” he asked.
“Nope—just two kitchen chairs.”
“Kitchen chairs? What for?”
“To train ’em with.”
Whereupon “Cap” got his chairs and a buggy whip. Then he ordered one lion into the arena, where he awaited it.
The lion took one look and sprang. Midway in the air, it struck something, roared in victorious fashion, then settled to chew it to pieces. But it wasn’t a man—it was that chair. He disentangled himself and leaped again, only to tangle himself with the second chair which “Cap” had tossed in his path. A third time, while again Ricardo broke the leap with the first chair which he had retrievedwhile the lion was breaking away from the second; then the cat paused to look his new antagonist over. So far he hadn’t been hurt at all. Merely foiled. Here was some one who could outwit him, and who really had him at his mercy, who didn’t beat him, but who, instead, talked and purred and meowed continually in friendly fashion. The lion didn’t leap again.
One by one the whole group was introduced to its new trainer. Not once was a gun fired. Not once was a cat struck, other than a sharp tap with that buggy whip. That season the “hopeless” act once more went on the road, and “Cap” Ricardo worked it!
In fact, “Cap” is a man of individual theories. Just as his kitchen chair was an idea of his own, so there are others.
“I’ll stick my head in any lion’s mouth on earth,” he says. “But,” with a wink, “I got a trick about it. Always chew tobacco, see? If the lion should happen to close down, I’d just let that tobacco go in his mouth. Ever notice how you’ll open your jaws sudden-like when you’ve got hold o’ something that tastes bad? Huh? Well, it’d be the same way with a lion. He’d turn loose and I’d take my head out.”
Which is an optimistic manner in which to look at things. The billing of “Cap” as “the man of a thousand scars” is only a slight exaggeration. Hepossesses them by the hundreds, for “Cap” is a specialist on undoing the misdeeds of others.
“It’s just this here old principle of red-hot coals, or coals of fire, or whatever you call ’em,” he explains. “Now, for instance, if you hit a man that’s tryin’ to be good to you, you’re goin’ to feel bad about it, ain’t you? Well, a cat, when he’s clawing you up—he knows what he’s doin’. Don’t ever get it in your head that he don’t. Particularly a tiger cat. I always did like tiger cats better’n I liked lion cats, at that. ’Course, lots of trainers will tell you different, but I’ve seen ’em all; I’ve been among the slums and I’ve been among the aristocrats, and what I claim is, the lions ain’t the king of beasts. But, be that as it may, a cat knows what he’s doing. And when he finds out he’s done a friend dirt, ain’t he goin’ to be sorry about it and do his best to make up? That’s my theory, and it works out too.”
Incidentally, one of these little coals of fire took shape one day while “Cap” was standing on the ballyhoo stand of a circus sideshow, a lion by his side. Inadvertently, he poked the lion in an eye, and the lion in turn bit off the middle finger of “Cap’s” right hand.
“But he didn’t mean to,” says “Cap”. “Figure yourself how surprised a guy gets when he bumps his face into a door in the dark. He never meant it.”
Which may sound as an unusual example. To a certain extent it is, for “Cap” and his theories have an outstanding place in the show world, the surprising thing about them being the fact that they have worked out to such an extent that he “breaks” a great many of the animal acts for the biggest circus in the world. However, there are other instances of affection between trainer and animal, almost as remarkable.
Out on a ranch in Colorado live a man and a woman who once were featured on the billboards of every city in the country. He was a menagerie superintendent, she a trainer of lions, tigers and elephants. But they troupe no more.
The circus does not represent to them what it once did. There seems a certain bitterness about it, a grimness which they are unable to dispel, and so they remain away. The elephant which they raised together from a three-year-old “punk” to one of the really great performers among pachyderms in America is dead, felled by volley after volley of steel-jacketed bullets during a rampage at Salina, Kansas, several years ago, in which he all but wrecked the menagerie and endangered the lives of hundreds of persons.
Loneliness on the part of the elephant for his old trainers is commonly accredited for his “badness.” But the circus had no other recourse; there were human lives to guard and only one thing waspossible, to slay the maddened beast before it, in turn, became a slayer. But that argument doesn’t go with his former trainers.
“They surely could have found some way of holding him quiet until we got there,” is their plaint, “they just didn’t understand him! If they had even told him that we were coming, he’d have quieted down. He just wanted us, and we weren’t there, and he went out of his head for a while. If they’d only penned him up in the cars and then wired us, we’d have come; we’d have gotten there somehow!”
In answer to which the circus points to pictures of wrecked wagons, smashed ticket boxes, torn side walling, and overturned animal dens—in vain. The trainers can’t accept the argument.
“The circus wouldn’t be the same—without Snyder,” is their reply, and the big tops go traveling on without two stellar performers.
A similar incident came in Texas, during the necessary killing of another elephant on the same show, which had become maddened through “must,” and was virtually insane. He had torn the menagerie almost to shreds, injured one man, and was holding a whole town at bay. And while circus men hastened for army rifles, the executive staff struggled with a woman who strove by every means of feminine aggressiveness to break from their grasp, and go to that elephant.
“Let me go, you idiots!” she screamed in hysterical fashion. “I can handle him! I’m not afraid—let me go! Let me go!”
She had trained the elephant for two years, and it had obeyed her every command. With any other pachyderm, she would have understood that the natural condition of “must” brings insanity, and that, when in this condition, it recognizes no one, understands no command, and knows nothing save the wildest sort of maniacal antagonism toward everything, animate or inanimate, which may come into its path. But her faith in this particular beast had transgressed even beyond good sense. It was necessary to drag her from the circus grounds by main force before the first shot could be fired at the unfortunate beast!
Nor does the love of animals always confine itself to the trainer. Workmen of the circus are shadowy beings; few persons know whence they come, what their life before they drifted into the nomadic, grim life of the “razorback,” the “canvasman” or the “big top roughneck.” There are stories by the scores in the unshaven beings who sleep about the lot in the afternoons; stories of men whose finer cast of features tells of a time when all was not work and long hours, hints of hidden things in the shadows; they are men who seldom write a letter or receive one. And they are lonely.
Human companionship often does not appeal to them. But the friendship of animals is a different thing. Perhaps it is because they can talk to these beasts during the long hours of the night, as the circus train rocks along on its journey from town to town, knowing that their confidences will not be revealed. Nevertheless, the fact remains that more than one workman has been left behind in an alien burial ground, with no close human friend to know of his death, and with only a lion or tiger or elephant to watch for a companion who never again appears.
More than once also I have seen laborers of the circus volunteer to “sit up” with a dying orang-outang or chimpanzee, doing their work by day, remaining awake at night and nursing the beast in the hours of darkness; at last, lonely again, tears in their eyes, to shuffle on out to their hard, grim, dangerous labors, while a still form remains behind, to be buried behind the big top, after the matinée. It was such a case as this that formed a story which a certain circus owner likes to tell, as he explains one of the reasons why the workmen of his show are better treated than they were in other days, and furnished with more conveniences and accommodations. For in this case it was the man and not the animal that suffered tragedy.
No one around the show even remembers his name. They only know that his loyalty and devotionin a strange friendship caused a soft-hearted circus owner to become far more interested in the workmen than ever before, almost to the point of sentimental solicitude. The recipient of that loyalty, incidentally, was rather grotesque,—Bon, the baby hippo, or, in circus language, “the blood-sweating behemoth of Holy Writ.”
Four men carried Bon to the show when he arrived, a fat aimless-appearing baby river hog from the Nile Country. The press agents properly exploited him. Which Bon didn’t seem to relish whatever, for all that the baby hippopotamus did was whine. One day the menagerie superintendent received an inspiration.
“That hip’s lonesome,” he announced to an assistant. “Round up one of them there ‘roughnecks’ and put him in with it—see if that does any good.”
The “roughneck,” known only as Mike, was obtained, and paid a few dollars extra a week for the discomfort of sleeping in the same cage with a hippopotamus. A silent, taciturn individual, he had told nothing of himself when he came on the show; his name had been plainly a makeshift, and the circus, with other things to think about, had made no inquiries.
The baby hippo ceased to whine. Gradually, it was noticed that the “hippopotamus nurse,” was taking more and more interest in his charge, pilferingbread for him from the cookhouse, or cutting fresh grass from around the circus lot, when he should have been resting during matinée hours. A month passed. The hippo seemed cured.
“Guess you can go back to your bunk now,” said the menagerie superintendent.
The “hippo nurse” nodded. But the next morning, the superintendent found him again in the behemoth’s den.
“Just thought I’d sneak out an’ see how he was gettin’ along,” came the explanation. “An’ he was whinin’—so I stuck with him.”
The superintendent winked—to himself. Two dollars a week extra is a fortune to a circus roughneck.
“Nix on that stuff,” came finally; “the pay’s stopped.”
“Yeh. I know it.”
And Mike continued to sleep in the hippopotamus den—without pay. Another month passed. Two more after that. The circus rounded into its trip down the west coast, for its final effort at possible dollars before the cold weather closed in. Then, one night, the emergencies suddenly clamped hard. There had come a shrieking cry from the shrouded wagons atop the flat cars, the warning of that feared thing of the circus:
“Fire! F-i-r-e!”