The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-11-27
THE WAYS OF ANIMALS.
Elephants Terrified at the APP
proach of Rat
SOME STORIES HARD TO BELIEVE
BUT GIVEN AS AUTHENTIC.
Fight Between a Sparrow and an
Elephant - Remarkable Trained
Crow-An Example of the Reason
ing Power of AnimaIs-The yalu-
able Dog of a POacher.

ing Power of AnimaIs-The yalu-
able Dog of a POacher.
GBoston Herald.l
A rather remarkable contest was
witnessed the other day in the elephant
house in the Central park menagerie,
New York. A pugnacious sparrow flew
in and began picking up the crumbs
from the table of the only elephant
then inside. The mammoth and the
midget apparently did not see eacn
| other for some time, until the former,
shifting his position, nearly put his
/ foot on the latter The fighting little
| speck of fuss and feathers evidently
accepted this thoughtless act as a
challenge to battle, and at once flew
in the elephants face. The great beast
! looked astonished, and, sending a
small cyclone through his trunk, raised
such cloud of hay and dust that the
bird was lost sight of.
When the air cleared, the biped was
seen on the quadruped'S back. A shake
of the elephants loosely fitting, tough
though sensitive hide, frightened the
little fellow, who hoped to the floor
and looked into the face of his an
tagonist.
Thus they stood, as though trying to
recover breath for a few seconds,
when the elephant reached out his
trunk toward the sparrow. The bird
with outstretched wings and ruffied
feathers, threw himself with full force
at the end of the threatening proboscis
Then came a gentle blast of air from
the elephants trunk, and the sparrow
was blown against the wall of the
house. The little fellow, without even
so much as parting look at his huge
antagonist, mounted to the open Win
dow and disappeared.
Apropos of the training of pets is
the story Of "Yacob," a crow belong
cobbler, in Louisville, which was ac-
cidentally poisoned. Dreschnock took
the crow from its nest before it could
fly. In a conversation about his pet,
he said:
People here don't know about crows.
They cut their tongues and then ex-
pect them to talk. That's all bosh. A
crow that can't talk without his tongue
cut, can't talk with it cut. To teach a
crow to talk you must handle it like
child. You must teach it word at
time. When you want it to do some
thing you must show 1t. When you tell
a child for the first time to shake
hands it don't understand. You must
take it's hand in yours at the same
time you tell it to shake hands. 1 fed
my crow for six weeks before it was
able to eat by itself Then 1 let it
hop around the shop here. It's favorite
place was on that peg-cutter there.
The little fellow would sit up there
and watch me pound away at shoes
all day long. The first word 1 taught
it to say was Hello This is the
simplest word, and if a crow can say
hello it can say most any other word.
didn't say anything else to it for
three days. The bird sat there and
watched my mouth with a serious in
tereSt. It would cock its head on one
side and blink it's eyes as wisely as an
owl. Every once in awhile it would go
into queer contortions. Suddenly it let
please it. The bird tapped it's wings
and hoped about the place in the
greatest glee, calling hello in a per-
feet torrent After that I taught it to
say Goodbye Then it learned its
name, and when anyone asked it who
it was the bird would answer with an
amusing gravity, L am a good crow
quite plainly.
THAT crow was a wonder. He was
the smartest crow I ever knew. When
ever the fire bells rang, Yacob would
yell Fire, fire firei' as if his life de-
pended on it. Yacob prided himself on
being able to bark like a dog. If he
found a stranger in the yard he at
once set UP d loud barking, which al
ways warned me. When he sat at the
counter there he never allowed anyone
to handle my tools. He showed his
dIsaDproval by hopping on their hands
and pecking them viciously. Yacob
was not like other crows. Other crows
talked only when they felt like it,
Yacob talked when occasion required
it. When my customer left the shop
and [ asked Yacob what he said he
very politely tapped his wings as if to
make a courtesy and called out, Good
bye I kept him in a cage over night
and set the cage so he could see the
door open when 1 entered the shop in
the morning. He always greeted me
with Hello and at once demanded to
be let out of his cage.
Grows live 100 years if some acct
dent doesn't happen to them It was
unfortunate when I placed the poison
last Sunday for the reaches Yacob
got some of it about p. m. When he
began to fall sick he came to me
at once. and, hopping in my hand, re-
fused to leave. 1 gave him milk and
oil, but it did no good. Towards 6
Yacob seemed worse, so I carried him
to the cage. He clutched me about
the finger, and sat there until he died"
superintendent Stephan of the Gin
cinnati Zoo declares that wild animals
are mostly left-handed, and he has
been endeavoring to verify this OBJ
servation on two parrots lately brought
from Mexico He found that, in
grasping a finger offered as a perch.
the parrots almost always put the left
foot forward. Usually the finger thus