Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-10-24
FOR MEMORY'S SAKE

'If there's any enc thing that all animals
| wild and domestic. from the weasel to the
white elephant possess in plentiful meas
| IRE. it's memory" remarked a veteran cir
Gus man. now settled in Washington moi
all animals are gratefuL But they an
kremember. Their memory works in diff
ferent ways. The cats. for instance. re-
member an injury a great deal longer
than they do kindness. All cats are
revengeful, and they've got to have
memories to be that. One little injury IN
nicted by a keeper will cause any CATION
tiger. leopard, -panther-to forget years OIL
Kindness and care the part of the keeper.
Instead of being sufficiently grateful lor
past kindnesses to call the account square
after the injury, the cat passes up the re-
| membrance of all of the kindness ana de-
cides to get hunk for the one injury at the
first opportunity.
II remember particularly one case OF that
sort The boss cat man of the show was
breaking in a new cat hand who .asp'reo 10
be exhibition cage trainer. The new man
| accidentally f1icked a big leopard, when ne
was trying to get the training mastery VI,
in the eye with his cat whip. The leopard
hoped him and was about to claw him
apart when the boss cat man, VINO was
outside the cage, stuck a pair or reo-hot
pole-length irons through the cage bars ana
let the snarlng leopard have them In ABOUT
a dozen different sections OF his pelt at
| once. The leopard curled up at that ana
skunk to a corner of his cage, while the
new cat man crawled out OF the cage
pretty glad to slam the door behind him.
ION the following day the boss cat man
stepped into that leopards cage to put MIN
through his PAGES at the afternoon snow,
as he had been doing every exhibition day
for couple of years. The leopard JuI1lpeo
| him instantly and pulled most or the hide
| off the boss cat mans breast and arms pc
fnro I1.. ni,,xy lnI tn
| outside the cage.
| The boss cat man had nursed that leop-
| ard through several bad attacks OF SICK
! ress, had fixed up an ugly liberated tooln
| that the leopard had, and had 1nnulSeo
and molly-codded him in way quite ul
usual with cat men for more than Two
years. But the leopard brushed all OF Ina.
! by when he developed his grudge agalns.
| the cat man on account of the burning lie
| had got from him with the hot irons. ne
| remembered only the injury.
| 1.-The ats remember, all right, ana they
| have mighty uncomfortable memories at
| times In Omaha the last time L was
| there with the old show, a little imp OF
small boy, wearing a green-peaheu cap
| something like a Jockeys. stood IN front VI
| the cage of one of our lloneSSeS ana lur-
| lively amused himself by popping at her
| eyes with buckshot, which he fired from
| bean-Shooter. 1t was a pretty StronS cass
! that she was in, but she snapped Two ol
| the steel bars in her madness To get ioose
| and get at the boy, and bent several others.
One of the keepers booted the kid. with the
| green cap all the way home. FROM that
| hour the lioness got into 81 rage every
| time she spied any sort of a green head
| covering in the crowds in front OF her
cage. She would launch herself against
| the bars and roar at the sight OF green
| veil on a woman's hat, and, paradlng'
when she saw a raised green parasol she
| scared tmid spectators by her Jury. oiie
| got to hate green worse than Dull mates
a red auction fiag-it became an obsesslon
,-.xl dow oh n
pretty near showing, in that, that she
| possessed good memory.
| Elephants have just good memories
as humans-better than a good many hu
| mans that I've met We had seasoned
| old peanut cruncher of an African Dull
| elephant that probably knew the flavor
of the circus saWdust long before L began
I to teethe-and I'm no gosling-that showed
| me once what a rafting good memory he
| had slowed beneath those two big knobs on
the top-s6es of his head. One year we
| made our first fall tour of Mexico, around
| the northern provinces. There were not
| many railroads down that way then, and
| we made a lot of towns by overland hikes,
| in the course of which there was heap OF
| fording to be done by the big animals
| This old bull elephant got begged one
| morning in a sort of a Quicksand in the bed
| of a 100-yard-wide creek which the show
| was fording in Chihuahua. We had TO 40
| a lot of hurry work in the way of rigging
up block and-tac exile paraphernaiia to yank
| the old chap ont of the mire and he had
+, the sulks for several weeks after the inci7
| dent 1t happened. however, fortunat ely.
| that that was the last ford We had to make
| during that tour.
"Well. we went down to Old Mexico again
| for the tour over the same ground four
years later. The old elephant made all of
| the fords in good shape and with perfect
| willingness, but when we came to the ford
| in which he'd got mired four years before
| he bucked and he bucked hard. -
| There simply nothing doing. He
| wouldn't ford that creek under any circum-
! stances. AS soon as he got to, the verge OF
| it and looked it over out of his beady red
eyes he recognized the stream, and he
| trumpeted and swished his trunk for
! quarter of an hour. We gave him the CAD
| in ali parts of him at once, but 1t was no
use. He just leaned back on the gads and
made nary a bulge. We had to go four
| miles upstream and charter a fiat for him
| and pole it down to where he stood like
stone elephant He went aboard the fiat
| without a kick when he saw and under
! stood what it was for but he would have
| allowed himself to be slivered to ribbons
| before he'd have waded again into that
stream. the bed of which had let down on
him and thus abused his confidence four
years before The elephants memory in
| that case better than mine, for it was
/ not until after he had made his buck upon
| arriving at the verge of the creek that I
! called that this was the stream from which
| we'd been obliged to block and tackle him
| out on cur previous tour of Chihuahua