Chapter VI: When the Animals Escape

Perhaps at some time in your life you’ve stood in front of a lion’s cage at a circus, watching the pacing beast within and speculating upon what is happening in the mind of the shifting, uneasy creature as he makes the rounds from one end of the den to the other, poking his heavy nose against the bars, leaping upon the partition at one end, rebounding, growling, then springing at the heavily barred, double-locked door before taking up his pacing step once more.

Presumably it is easy to read that mind. He wants to get out. There is murder in those deep eyes; you can see it. The gruff growl is one of hate and malice and enmity toward all those about him, toward the trainers with their feeding forks, toward the massing crowds flooding through from the marquee for their look at the menagerie before traveling on to the seats of the big show. You can see viciousness there, and bloody desire and determination. You know that only one thought occupies that bestial brain,—to escape those steel bars, to break forth upon the humans he hates, to destroy, to devour.

And the only discrepancy about the meditation is the fact that you are entirely wrong! If that lion is thinking at all, he’s wondering whether he’s going to get a bone for breakfast the next morning, or whether it will be lean meat. As for escaping,—why should he leave a good home and make a lot of trouble for himself? That pacing and leaping is merely obedience to a natural law which commands that he take a certain amount of exercise, nothing more.

Not that jungle animals often do not commit murder when they escape. But when this happens it usually is the result of long waiting for a specific object. A leopard, for instance, will take its chance at death that it may kill a trainer it hates. But ordinarily the jungle animal that you see within a cage at a circus has no idea and no desire to leave. If it does, it isn’t happy until it gets back into its dear old cage once more, back home where there is safety and comfort and where the world isn’t rough and uneven and decidedly unpleasant,—as it is outside the bars. Queer, but it’s true; the escape of an animal about a circus is often funnier than it is serious.

There must be a reason, and there is. The usual animal that you see in the circus isn’t a product of the jungle. He wouldn’t recognize his “native heath” if he should be introduced to it. His world from cubhood has been a cage; he was born in one, he was reared in one, and he knows absolutely nothing about the other life. He regards his cage as his home, as his natural habitat, and is lost without it. True, give a lion or tiger or leopard even a day in the open country, and he will revert to type. The old instincts will come upon him, he will kill his food in the same manner that his ancestors killed, when they were wild, free creatures, knowing nothing else. He will become the savage beast that his instincts command him to be. He will fall as naturally into the stealth, the sagacity and the cunning of the jungle as though he had been bred to that life. But he can’t do this in a few minutes. The result is that when he does escape, through innate animal curiosity which leads him to investigate why his cage door should be open instead of closed, or why a lock or bar should give beneath his weight when he leaps, he finds himself in an unkind, noisy, excited sphere full of troubles and annoyance, and wishes that he’d never wandered from the old fireside.

It’s a sort of animal psychology. A beast may be mean within an arena. He may even be a killer. Yet once on the outside, he may be a poor, befuddled thing, happy to find again the open door leading to his cage, and glad to get away from the hurly-burly into which a misstep of curiosity led him. His mind leads no more naturally to thoughts of escape than it would to tatting or embroidery. If you doubt the fact, watch closely the next time you witness a wild animal act. You will see that the arena is of steel, that the door is safely trussed and laced with heavy leather straps. But that the entire top of the great, metal enclosure is covered with nothing more than a broad expanse of woven hemp netting! And as an illustration of that little remark about the “killer”:

One time, Ed Warner, general agent of a circus, and myself stood in the wings of a theater in Denver. We were making the lions and tigers of the circus pay for their winter feed by a short tour of vaudeville performances, and out upon the stage Captain Ricardo, the trainer, high-booted, gold-laced, was sending the tawny beasts through their category of tricks, meanwhile keeping a weather eye trained upon a vicious, murderous, inbred lion, whose sole desire seemed to consist of an ambition to separate “Cap” from his internal arrangements. Day after day, week after week, and month after month, through the summer season of the circus they had fought and sparred, the lion snarling and roaring on his pedestal, his claw-fringed forefeet striking out in vicious circles as the whip of the trainer curled toward him, the lips drawn back from the ugly, yellow teeth, the evil eyes narrowed and squinted, his whole being one of fierce animosity toward this one hated personage, his trainer.

The act was nearing its finish, the leaping of the hurdles by the various trained beasts and “Cap” was putting the barricades in place. One of them stuck; the trainer yanked at it in an effort to straighten it and failed. With a leap, he then rushed forward to correct the position of the hurdle, and in doing so cramped himself between the “turntable” and the steel walls of the arena, with his back half-turned toward the killer.

“Cap! _Cap!_ Look out!”

Ed and I were shouting from the wings, regardless of what the audience might think. For the killer had jumped from his pedestal and was creeping forward with all the sinuosity of a snake, toward the victim for whom he had waited. The trainer turned to find the ugly, open jaws of the lion not three feet away!

An instantaneous action and he had drawn his revolver, with its heavily wadded blank cartridges, sending shot after shot straight into the eyes of the malicious beast, the powder singeing the hair of the broad, flat forehead, the wadding stinging and disconcerting him. The lion whirled dazedly and pawed with the pain of the attack. The instant was enough for the trainer to jump clear and bring his bull-whip into action, while Ed and I—it was in the days before the Eighteenth Amendment—hurried out to get something that would put the strength back into our knees.

A week later, we were in another theater. It was just before the performance, and the three of us were in the trainer’s dressing room listening to a recital by the lion-man of how he inadvertently allowed one finger to rest too long near a lion’s mouth,—hence the missing digit. Above us was scuffling and noise, bumping and shouts, and Warner grunted.

“They sure make plenty of noise when they set a stage at this show shop, don’t they?”

“You said it.”

We continued our talk, while the noise above grew greater, finally to still. There came the sound of clanging steps on the iron stairs leading from the stage. Then the door was thrown open, and a belligerent stage carpenter faced the animal trainer.

“I wish you’d keep them toothless ole lions o’ yours locked up,” he blurted. “I’ve had a helluva time with ’em!”

“You?”

“Yeh. Came on the stage just now and found three of ’em wandering around. I gave two of ’em a kick and they jumped back in their cage, but the third one tried to get funny with me. So I whaled the tar out of him with a stage prop and made a cut alongside his head. Better get up there. He’s bleedin’. But I couldn’t help it; we can’t have them things runnin’ loose when we’re trying to set a stage.”

We went upstairs, to find, half-sitting, half-leaning against the side of the cage, a disconsolate, amazed lion, staring dejectedly through the bars and licking the blood which ran down his nose from a cut just in front of one ear. He had the appearance of some one who had encountered a very, very rough time, and who had not yet recovered from his fright and his surprise. We simply stood and stared. It was the inbred, the killer! Nor did we tell the stage carpenter his record.

The explanation is simple. In his cage, that lion was a bully and a ruffian because that was his element, that his stamping ground, that his home. But once outside, he had lost his bearing, the attack of the stage carpenter literally had swept him from his feet, and he had turned from a killer to a coward.

Nor is this the only instance. There is in the carnival business a personage known as Bill Rice. Every one in the circus or carnival business knows Bill. They don’t know his shows, for the simple reason that he changes his mind about every season and puts out a new one. This was one of the years when he was running a circus and, of course, presenting each day a street parade.

Among his animals was a vicious lion. And one day as the den was being cleaned for the parade, the animal man forgot to put into place the bar which held tight the steel door.

The cage went out on parade. The lion began to pace its prison. A jolt, and it struck the door. A second later, while telephone poles became clustered with human fruit, while horses reared and plunged, while women reached for baby buggies and hurriedly got them out of the way, forgetting entirely the fact that the babies themselves had been placed on the curbing, while men seized wives in their arms and hustled them to safety, without looking to see whether they were their own wives or the wives of some one else, the lion plumped to the pavement and stared dizzily about him for an instant, while he tried to fathom what had happened.

Then came panic. On all sides, including that of the lion. The cage had gone on. The horses pulling the den immediately in the rear had engaged in a runaway. Everywhere, people were shouting, milling, running and climbing trees and telephone poles. The lion scrambled vaguely, made a false start or two, whirled, then dived straight for a small negro restaurant across the street.

The restaurant had been full when things started. But its windows had opened automatically, through the simple method of persons going through glass, sash and all. At the instant the lion entered the door, a negro waiter was just arriving at one of the front tables with a tray of food. He saw the lion. One wild toss and the leonine beast found himself in the midst of a shower of soup, ham bones, chitlins and whatnot, while the waiter, screaming, made for the kitchen.

It was a bit disconcerting. For one excited, panicky second the lion fought the clattering dishes, clawing at them and biting vaguely at the atmosphere. Then stung by hot soup, half blinded by the pounding of crockery as it descended upon his eye and skull bones, he leaped at random and ran for a new place of hiding. And his path led toward the kitchen also!

The chef went out a window. Also the waiter. The dishwasher, deafened by the clattering of the crockery which he was massaging, had not received the warning in time to avail himself of a method of exit. He turned, saw a lion entering his domain, and did the only natural thing, opened a small door leading to the drain pipes beneath the sink, and dived in. Just then, some excited person appeared in the front of the restaurant with a shotgun, and fired.

The charge went wild except for a few shots which did no more than sting the lion’s hide, but the noise was enough. Befuddled, bewildered, in the midst of a strange world and a conglomeration of annoying surroundings, the beast leaped again and sought retreat.

Happiness! A hole! Something to crawl into, some place where he might hide! It was the opening beneath the sink. And there the animal men of the circus found them, a fear-whitened, speechless negro, and an amazement-stricken lion, wedged in together, side by side, and neither making the first move to come out. The lion didn’t want to. He was safe in a hole. The negro dishwasher couldn’t. Even after the lion had been lassoed, pulled forth and dragged like some great, shaggy, recalcitrant dog into a shifting den, the dishwasher could do nothing but gasp and sit there beneath the sink. And between the two the lion was perhaps the more frightened!

Talk to the animal trainer, and he will tell you that as a rule it is not the maliciousness of an escaped animal which causes trouble. It’s the panic of the crowd about him and the fright of the animal himself. The fear in a beast’s mind when he suddenly becomes free is all pervading. He does not know that every one else is afraid of him; he believes that he is in a world surrounded by enemies, that the safety of the cage has vanished, and that he must fight—if fight there be—for his very existence. It was during such a case as this that a tiger which escaped from a circus at Twin Falls, Idaho, a number of years ago, killed a child, and was in turn killed by Frank Tammen, the manager of the show, with a revolver. In his native state, a revolver shot would mean nothing to an eight-foot, four-hundred-pound tiger. It would simply bring a charge and the death of the hunter. But in the circus, the tiger was killed simply because he was out of his element, he was frightened, dazed, and he had not been loose sufficiently long to gain the natural savagery which time would bring him by the sheer command of instinct.

In fact, panic is the ruling power of the suddenly loosed animal. In elephants this is almost invariably true. Yet in spite of it, there is always an indication that the ruling sense of humor which appears always to be present in the elephantine mind, is there even in the frenzy of flight. And when the elephants break loose, there is this to remember: keep out of the way! For an elephant does not know how to go around anything. His ideas run along straight lines, and his paths follow his ideas.

In Winnipeg, for instance, several years ago, a circus was showing on the fair grounds. A severe storm came up, and the elephants became frightened. They decided to run, the whole herd of them, and some thirty tons of elephantine flesh suddenly broke loose and headed for new and open fields where there was no thunder, no lightning and no wind.

Before them was one of the buildings of the fair association. It was a solid structure, built to stand year after year. At least, that was the idea in the minds of those who had erected it. But the path of the escaping pachyderms was on a line that included the building! The head of the herd, leading the chase, could have turned to the right some fifty or seventy-five feet and gone on without an obstruction. Was it done? It was not. A building showed ahead of her; she lowered her head, and hunching her shoulders, went on. A crash, the splintering of wood, the flying dust of mortar and the clattering of brick. Where the wall had been was now a hole, with the rear end of an elephant disappearing within, followed closely by the rest of the thundering herd, each one taking out a bit more as it went through.

The other side—and a repetition. When the runaway was over, the building contained a perfect tunnel. As for the elephants, they ran until they became tired, breaking down a few fences and wooden sheds and other inconsequential impediments which had arisen in their path; then they stopped at a haystack and gorged themselves until the trainers arrived, gave them all a good berating and hustled them back to the show again.

The same was true in Riverside, California. There it was the same herd, led by the same old elephant, old enough, one would think, to have better sense, since one hundred and twenty-five circus seasons had passed since she was a bouncing baby of some three hundred pounds. This time Old Mamma led the way through a barber shop, taking with her, draped over her shoulders, the mug rack which hung at one end, and distributing along the street the vari-colored shaving-soap receptacles with their gaudy lettering and resplendent flowers, while the rest of the herd, trumpeting and bellowing, clattered along in the rear. From there the course led down the street, where, a bit tired, Mamma stopped at a fruit stand, the rest of the herd nudging up beside her, while the proprietors yelled for the police,—and departed.

The oranges and apples were great. Mamma enjoyed ’em. Also Alice and Floto and Frieda and the rest of the bulky runaways. In the rear the crowd, recovering a bit from its fright, began to close in. Just then, however, Mamma happened to notice that within the store hung a beautiful bunch of bananas. So she went in, taking the door with her. After that a new panic, for the floor was breaking, and an elephant hates an unsound footing. So she and the rest of the herd went out again,—through the wall on the other side!

Once more a runaway, which led to the free and open country. An hour or so of wandering about. Then the herd grew tired. Back into town it came, and a few minutes later, a yelping livery stable owner scurried down the street with the announcement that his place of business had just been visited by a flock of elephants that was eating up everything in the barn!

There the animal men found them, peaceable, glad to obey their commands, happy and squealing and grunting as they answered the shout of “mule up” and trudged back once more to the circus. And the animal men will tell you that when the elephants dropped in at that livery stable they were doing their pachydermic best to get back to the show. They were through with their panic, they realized that they were lost, and they had but one thing to guide them,—the smell of fresh hay which would indicate to them the menagerie. They found that odor in a livery stable, and there they stopped. It wasn’t exactly home, but it was a good substitute.

It is indeed seldom that the escape of any animal in a circus is a premeditated thing. The accidental opening of a door, the breaking of bars, or a wreck of some sort is the thing which usually leads to the cry “Th’ lions is loose!” or the scurrying of a wild beast through the menagerie. But premeditated escapes have happened, and among them is the story of Fuller, a gigantic black-faced chimpanzee, whose mind, according to the scientists, was but a few notches below that of the human.

Fuller once had been the pet of a Pasadena millionaire and had been allowed to run loose about the estate. However, that brought complications. Residents of the neighborhood began to complain that their houses were being burglarized, ice boxes robbed, and in one instance an elderly man who affected a silk hat, Prince Albert and cane, investigated a noise in the hallway to find a six-foot chimpanzee just making his exit with his cane in one hand and the silk topper slanted over one eye. Then Fuller began to invite himself to breakfast rooms, even bedrooms, loping in the windows at inopportune times and causing everything from hysteria to riot calls, with the result that he ceased to be a pampered pet and became a circus exhibit. And there, for the first time, Fuller found out what it meant to hate. Not a hundred feet away, in the winter quarters, was the elephant line and that, to Fuller, meant trouble.

The elephant and the chimpanzee are natural enemies. That enmity came into being in the circus winter quarters, and the gigantic Fuller spent most of his time sitting crouched in his cage, grimacing and yowling at the hulking beasts, even repeating one of his tricks of other days,—that of wiggling his fingers at his nose. Day after day he worked at his chains, loosing them, only to have them replaced by the animal men. Then one night the telephone in the winter home of Henry Boucher, head animal trainer of the circus, whirred viciously. He answered to find the night watchman at the other end of the line:

“Get over here as quick as you can!” came the excited message. “Fuller’s loose and he’s whipping all the elephants! They’re about to bust through the building. Hurry!”

Boucher hurried,—to find that the watchman’s report had been correct. The herd had broken loose from its picket pins and was crowded in one corner of the building, milling and trumpeting. Only one elephant still was showing fight, a great tusker, and he was about ready to quit. His rushes had availed him nothing; Fuller merely ducked out of the way, and chattering, returned to the attack. The long, heavy tusks had been useless. Their thrusts struck only air as Fuller dodged them. The great blows of the forefeet, aimed at Fuller, had hit nothingness. The sweep of the heavy trunk had inevitably been met by the chimpanzee, who grasped it with his great hands as it circled toward him, then swung upon it until it had lost the force of the blow. Without inflicting a single injury, Fuller had won a “moral” victory simply by tantalizing the great beasts until their frenzy had reached the point of panic. And then Boucher approached him.

A kick, a cuff and a few cusswords. Fuller—his weight was close to two hundred and fifty pounds, and the strength of his great shoulders sufficient to tear a man limb from limb—merely squealed, raised one arm in front of his face like a child afraid of a slapping, then, in obedience to the command, trundled back to his cage. He had achieved his aim. He had wanted to whip those elephants, and he had done it. The object accomplished, he went back to captivity in peace.

But things do not always end as amiably when the circus animals get loose. As is the case with disease, the complications following the escape of jungle beasts often causes more excitement than the escape itself. To wit, the story of Bad Axe, Michigan, and an “escape yarn” that has become laughing history in circusdom. The recital requires a bit of an introduction.

Kaiser and Sultan, two of the lions of the show, were a bit different from the usual run of beasts, inasmuch as they had been led about as pets until almost the last possible moment when their catlike natures could be trusted. Strange as it may be, this often leads to bad temper when the beasts have reached the adult age, and certainly in the case of the two lions, there was little of fear and little of bewilderment when an animal man inadvertently left open a door of their cage and allowed them to wander forth.

The show at this time possessed what it once had believed to be a wonderful feature,—the result of a government experiment which had resulted in the cross-breeding of a Grevy’s zebra, from Africa, and a Rocky Mountain “Canary”, or burro, from Colorado. The result had been a strange and fearsome beast, possessing the striped body of a zebra, the uncertainty, the viciousness, the meanness and wildness of a jungle animal, combined with the head of a Missouri mule and all that goes with that contrary creature. Long months had been spent in training the things, with the result that they did wonderfully well in rehearsals, and the opposite during the performances. It was nothing at all for the “Five United States Government Hyneys” as they were called, to enter the show tent at a trot,—and keep on trotting. You could find Hyneys scattered all about the circus grounds—and about the town for that matter—trampling gardens, eating up flower beds, kicking the stuffing out of poor, innocent country horses who didn’t know enough to kick back, running up damage suits, attachments and causing trouble in general for the circus fixer. It was a dull week indeed when the Hyneys didn’t run away at least three times. Often they batted a thousand by pulling a runaway once a day. The result of which was a change in the circus program, from a glowing announcement of these wonderful beasts and the astonishing category of tricks which they had mastered, to the simple announcement:

THE FIVE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HYNEYS
WILL NOW PROCEED
TO DO AS THEY PLEASE!

Which they did. And which leads to the opening of the drama of Bad Axe, Michigan. It all happened before the show. The parade had just returned to the lot, the cages had been “spotted” in their regular places in the menagerie, and in the big top, or main tent, the canvas men, the roughnecks, the seat and plank men, the property men and “punks” were busily engaged in putting on the final touches before the opening of the doors for the matinée performance.

Everywhere was the well-greased, smooth-working activity of a circus in its final moment of preparation. From the padroom, a “pony punk” was leading the five recalcitrant Hyneys back to the menagerie from a short and eventful runaway. At one of the forward center poles, “Cow”, an assistant boss canvas man, was holding an iron stake which “Fullhouse”, a workman, was about to pound into the ground with a sixteen-pound sledge. Everything was traveling along smoothly, beautifully. Then a streaking figure shot from the “connection” or entrance to the menagerie, his arms waving, his eyes wild.

“F’r Gawd’s sake, run!” he yelled. “Th’ lions is loose! They’re right behind me!”

And they were,—Sultan and Kaiser, entering on a trot, perfectly composed through the experience of others days when they had been led about at the end of a leash as cubs, and looking for trouble. The center poles became alive with property men and seat-workers. Two-hundred-pound “Fat”, a plank man, made a three-foot leap for a trapeze tape and clambered up it in a far more agile manner than the acrobat himself could have done. Fullhouse dropped his sledge and ran a half mile to a tree where he was found roosting an hour later. “Cow”, still holding his iron stake, looked around somewhat hazily, saw Sultan only a few feet away, swung high the stake, walloped the lion in the forehead, knocked him flat and all but unconscious, then did a bit of running himself. Just then Kaiser saw the Hyneys with their zebra stripes, and a new angle of activity started. The zebra forms the lion’s natural meat in the wild state.

It all seemed to come back to Kaiser,—the old call of the veldt. He roared, with a note strange to the circus menagerie. Then he leaped, claws extended, mouth wide, straight for the rumps of the nearest Hyney.

But that was all. Out came vicious heels that caught the beast in the chest and knocked him back. He came on once more, only to find the world filled with kicking, sharp hoofs that battled him in the face and head and chest, that knocked the wind out of his lungs, that cut and whanged and battered him until at last, whimpering and bleeding, he turned and sought flight, the animal men after him, leaving behind a mulish, contrary creature that allowed his ears to go flat, and his raucous voice to raise in a long hee-haw of victory.

One lion was blinking in the daze of returning consciousness, the other was whipped and cowering in a clump of brush near the tent. Both of them were more than willing to quit. But the excitement still went on, for the elephants had decided to become panic-stricken.

The lions had passed the elephant line before the hulking beasts seemed to realize that the right and proper thing for an occasion like this should be a runaway. Whereupon the head of the herd emitted a bellow of excitement, pulled her stake from the ground, and made a hole in the side wall of the tent for the general exodus. One by one the big creatures ambled forth, squealing and trumpeting, the noise of their exit calling a small contingent of the animal men from the primary business of catching lions. Only one arrived in time, Boucher, the menagerie superintendent, and he got there just as the rear of the last elephant was disappearing.

A leap and he caught the hulking, squealing beast by its piglike tail and sought to run along behind it until his shouts could bring the head of the herd to her senses. He was wrong. The elephant herd merely rounded into express-train speed and kept going, while Boucher, his feet touching the ground once in a while, still clung to the last elephant’s tail and yelled himself hoarse, in vain. Then—more complications!

An eight-horse team, harnessed to an empty pole wagon, was just crossing the lot, quietly, peaceably, without any knowledge of what had gone on in the tent. Then came the elephants! Swarms of elephants, trumpeting, squealing, and thundering, as they came up from behind, alongside the wagon and its eight horses. It was too much. The driver pulled and tugged his best. It was useless. The horses, all eight of them, with the pole wagon clattering along behind, ran away also. Their idea was to evade the elephants. The result was that they stayed side by side, neither gaining on the other, while in the rear, Boucher still hung to an elephant’s tail.

Half across the lot and another element entered,—a man in an automobile. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a world full of elephants and horses, all coming toward him at once. So he decided to move faster than they. He didn’t. Just as his machine got into its speed on the rough, rutty ground, the elephants and horses came alongside.

And side by side the race began, the queerest race, so circus men say, in history,—a herd of elephants, an eight-horse team attached to a wagon, and a human being in an automobile. The elephants bellowed. The horses did all but scream. The man on the pole wagon yelled, and so did Boucher and the driver of the automobile.

Just before them stood the cook house. The automobile, under the guidance of a human being, ran halfway through the tent before it could be stopped. The elephants slid on their haunches and decided to quit. The horses, with a sudden swerve, ran around the end and finally came to a halt. The race was over. And the queer part of it all was that by this time the lions were back in their cages, both of them whipped to a standstill, and both of them glad to be home again where there were no hoofs or iron bars, and where life ran on the level!

And so goes the usual animal escape. There is often more to cause laughter than tragedy. For it is the good luck of the circus that most escapes happen when the tent is empty, during the cleaning time of the cages, or during a storm when the performance has been abandoned. And it is seldom that the audience itself suffers as a result. There have even been cases where animals have escaped during the performance of a circus and been recaptured, without a person in the great throng knowing anything of the occurrence!