Virginia citizen. (Irvington, Va.) 1891-1921, 1901-02-08
The zoo DISASTER.
Animals Loath to Part From
Their Trainers.

/ -
Their Trainers.
Frank 9. Bostock's Zoo, at Mount
Royal and Maryland avenues, Balti-
more,was destroyed by fire Wednesday
uight.
The origin of the fire ia to some ex-
tent a mystery. 1t started about
l0:4o o'clock and is supposed to have
resulted from crossed electric wires
The fire seemed to spring to all other
parts of the structure at once.
The building, being of wood, with
a shell of corrugated iron on the
outside, burned like tinder box. As
it happened, only two visitors were
in the building, having fingered af-
ter the show. They made dash for
the street and escaped danger. The
attendants of the animals tried to
rescue their pets, but the fierce rush
of the flames drove them back. 1t
was impossible to save the animals in
the cages.
"Big Liz" the largest elephant;
three camels, three donkeys and two
monkeys were all that were saved
out of nearly 400 animals including
"a lions, bears, jaguars, monkeys, and
in fact nearly all the animals of the
world were represented in this one
building. The animals made but
little noise.
A TRAINERS ACCOUNT OF 1T.
Herman, the man who was wont
to wrestle with lion as part of the
daily show, was seen after the fire
and his voice was choked with emo
tion as he told of the destruction of
his pets. He gave an interesting ac-
count of the disaster. He said:
81 had just gone up to the second
floor when / saw fire breaking out of
a room. Several others, especially
members of the band, saw the flames
at the same time and we all rushed
to the scene with the fire buckets,
hoping to put it out that way, but
we had no earthly show and were
driven away by the heat.
''l then rushed down stairs and
tried to get my favorite lion out of
his cage and into an exchange cage,
which would lead him to one out in
an alley on the Charles street side of
the building. Try as / could could
not get him into the exchanging
cage, although | got him out of his
own cage. l stayed there until the
heat drove me away and then closed
the door, leaving my pet there in the
little hallway to die in the flames.
GAS | came out / saw Madame Sc.
lica's seven lions in the arena, where
they had been turned out to feed af-
ter the audience left. They were
thoroughly frightened by the fire and
smoke, and though they roared some
it could not be heard outside, because
of the noise of flames. The last l
saw of them they were sinking
around the arena on their bellies,
exactly as they do in cases of great
danger in their native jungles.
"The monkeys and birds were
keeping up an awful chattering in
their cages, as they always do in
times of excitement, but not much
noise was made by the larger animals.
They seemed to be so thoroughly
cowed they could not use their voices.
Beside our animals, we all lost our
costumes and the many little person
al effects which we kept in the
building.
"We did not shoot our pets because
we did not have time for such hu-
name act. There were three loud
reports which caused people to think
atwe4iad been able to do SO, but
they we're caused by theexplosion of
the TANKS in which the gas was kept
10 be eusedfor thespecial illuminating
eeents sdariugtbs performance. minor
REPORTS were those Sf !:the bursting
electric. light hnlbsswhich go off like.
n pistoln s2x1sHEa1
sFfSVG ,se-ss6 ..s.-.5 s.I-..f5.s
,ogadspFp THE IIoNs KNOW. ..l
Nine PiAaks says, ga strange
fact was the ~a5an: which my lions
esta when I put, them into, their
cages after, the performance. They
were unwilling to return to the cages
and i had to opss force tpgst theplin.
Once on the inside they were equally
loath tehaye me leave and adopted
all thetricks customary With animals