The San Francisco call., 1905-03-31
ELK ESCAPES
FROM A CAGE
Margaret, Popular Park Den
izen, Creates Excitement
in the Mechanics Pavilion
LAsSOED BY KEEPER
Beautiful Animal Will Be
a Feature Of Forest and
Game Association Display

There have been many mad scenes OF
excitement at Mechanics Pavilion since
the carpenters finished battening on the
outside boards Of the great structure,
but none that has equaled in intensity
the arrival yesterday afternoon Of Mar
garet, COW elk from Golden Gate
Park, who is destined as an attraction
tor the exhibit now being prepared for
the Pacific Coast Forest, Fish and
Game Association. Margaret was Sc
lected because of her tractable dispOSi-
tion-''sweet, pale Margaret her keep
er calls her out at the park, because
she is so gentle.
Her removal began in the morning,
when stout crate was backed UP to
the elk corral and she was induced to
enter it. This was loaded into a huge
van and the journey was made to the
Pavilion without misgiyings, except on
the part of Margaret. Scenes unfa-
miliar to her, either on the grassy
stretches of the park or on her plains
and hills of Saskatchewan, worked on
her nerves. She was overwrought when
she reached the Pavilion
There a chute had been erected from
the Larkin street entrance, such as the
Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad
used to build for rustic Arkansans
when they intended to emigrate to
Texas, so they would not be afraid to
get on the train. Margaret was started
down the chute all right into forty
foot pen built for her. The pen was
sheathed in heavy wire eight feet high,
and above that was a tangle of lighter
wire. Margaret struck the bottom of
the chute, and then she arose, like
Professor Montgomery's aeroplane and
went through that wire as though it
was custard pie. She landed out in
he mid II 81 he ~,
diately there was cry:
THE elk's out!"
A disinterested and unexcited OBJ
server, who watched the subsequent
proceedings from an electric light wire,
said he had seen nearly every good ac-
robatic team that had performed in
public for the last ten years, but he
had never witnessed such exhibitions of
alacrity before as were displayed by
the two hundred or more attaches pres
ent. They went up the walls like flies
and hung suspended from girders, win
dow sashes and studboards as though
they liked their positions.
In the meantime the elk had disap-
peared and nobody knew where she
was. At the end of the Pavilion hung
cage containing "old Dick a crow be-
longing to Tom Ferguson, the Market
street saloon-keeper. The crow is as
verbose as a District Judge and can
be as fully biting in his remarks When
Margaret rushed uD the floor and
slipped under his cage he gave vent to
a series of remarks which if translated
from crow language would probably
not look well in print. This was the
first clew to Margaret's whereabouts.
The searchers slid along the sides of
the building and sighted the elk lying
on the floor. She saw them about the
same time, and jumping to her feet she
made leap to the music stand and
from there clear over the railing of the
first gallery, where she fell again and
rested. Her keeper climbed pillar and
took hitch on her head with a RATA.
Others came and tied her hind and fore
legs. Then she was packed and dragged
back to her pen, where the wiremen
went to work to construct a barricade
that will hold her for a while.
DR.. d Evelyn, who is in charge of the
bird and animal exhibit, was an inter-
ested and perspiring witness to the en-
tire performance. When it was over he
mopped his brow and said:
It's mighty lucky thing that the
accident of birth made that elk a COW
instead of BULL"