Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-08-17
ON ANIMAL MEMORIES

"A little while ago l read the printed
observation of an alleged circus horse
trainer-he must have been new one
who. among other things, sifted out tine
statement that the horse possesses neither
initiative, memory nor gratitude re-
marked a veteran animal man In charge or
the horses of a show that passed through
Washington recently.
Maybe that chap meant the carpenters
horse-he must have. He couldn't be
horse trainer and have made that kind Of q
crack about the sure-enough live horse.
Down in Athens, Ga. the other day,
little thing happened that proved II II
needed to be proved, that the horse sure
does possess all three Of the traits which
this maybe horse trainer said the horse
lacked -.-s.-. -s,--s2 -
"One of our old-time draught horses-hes
been touring with circuses so long that ne
liked the taste Of the leftover pink LEND
nade-had wrenched his shoulder in an up
hill pull In South Carolina couple OF weeks
before. and he was still on the hospital list
when we struck Athens. His driver. a hard
nut that We picked up somewhere out IN
Kansas. had passed up the sleeps that were
coming to him to take care of the injured
horse. applying liniments and hot cloths TO
the old nag's torn shoulder. and. in his gruh
way, petting and soothing the suffering old
beast.
While the afternoon show was on In
Athens the driver got into a mix-up with
soused tentman. 1t was a pretty hot fist
thing between the two. with honors about
even. both being hard. knotty men. Then
the convalescent old horse got in, and In
less than minute there was nothing to It,
The old draughter was naitered to the back
of wagon. munching, and the scrap
wasn't more than ten feet away from him.
He was used to scraps. and when 1t began
he raised his head to look it over in an
idle sort of way
But the instant that he saw that his
driver and pal, the hard man from Kansas,
who had been nursing his bad shoulder. was
one OF the mixers, he got busy. He broke
the halter strap with one jerk Of his head.
bounded over to where the punchfest was
coming off. wheeled around so as to get his
heels to it. and then he deposited as swift a
brace of heels right in the pit of the stom-
ach of the man hitting at his nurse as
you'd want to see.
THE man went down like a salt cod, but
even then it was all that a half a dozen Of
the hands could do to keep the angry Old
horse from savaging the fallen man with
his teeth and fore feet. And he's an old
horse at that, that was never before known
to use his heels in the way Of buck.
few minutes later he was beaming upon his
driver pal and Tipping and nuzzling his hick-
DRY shirt They were sure-enough pals,
those two. We had to leave the man that
he kicked in the Athens hospital. l guess
that afternoon. that he possessed initiative,
memory and gratitude
IF there's any one thing that all ami
mails, wild and domestic, from the weasel to
the white elephant have got, it's memory.
Not all of them are grateful. But they all
remember. Their memory works in differ
ent ways.
THE cats, for example. remember an in
jury a great deal longer than they do a
kindness. All cats are revengeful, and
they've got to have memories to be that.
One injury inflicted by keeper will cause
a cat-lon. tiger. leopard. pantiher-to for
get years of kindness and care on the part
Of the keeper Instead of being sufficiently
grateful for past kindness to call the ac-
count square after the injury. the cat
passes up the remembrance of all of the
kindness and decides to get hunk for the
one injury.
I'VE had case of that kind in our show
not long ago The boss cat man was break
ing in a new cat hand who aspired to be
an exhibition cage trainer. Tha new man
accidentally ficked the big leopard which
he was trying to get the training mastery
of. in the eye with his cat whip.
The leopard hoped him and was about
to claw him apart when the boss cat man,
who was outside the cage. stuck a pair Of
red-hot pole-langth irons through the cage
bars and let the snariing leopard have them
in about half a doZan parts of his hide at
once The leopard curled up at that and
sneaked to corner of his cage, while the
new cat man SUNK out of the cage pretty
glad to slam the door behind him,
'On the following day the boss cat man
stepped into that leopard's cage to put him
through his stunts at the afternoon show.
as he had been doing every exhibition day
for a couple of years. The leopard jumped
him Instantly and pulled most OF the flesh
off the boss cat mans chest and arm before
he again yielded to the hot irons from out
side his cage
THE boss cat man had nursed that
leopard through several bad attacks of
sickness, had fixed up bad liberated tooth
that the leopard had developed. and had
INDUCED him and mollycod lied him in "a
way quite unusual with cat men for more
than two years. But the leopard brushed
all of that by when he got his crouch
against the cat man on account. of the
burning he had got from him with the not
irons He remembered only the injury.
I'm Topeka. Kan, couple of years ago
a little devil of a small boy. wearing a
green peaked cap. something like jock
ey's, stoOl in front of the cage of one of
our lionesses and furtfvelY amused him
self by popping at her eyes with buckshot.
which he fired from a beanShooter. 1t was
a pretty strong cage that she was in, but
she snapped two of the steel bars in her
madness to be loose and get at the boy,
and bent several others. keeper booted
the boy with the green cap all Of his way
home. From that day to this that lioness
has got into a rage every time she's
spied any sort of green headcoverng in
the crowds in front of her cage. She will
launch herself against the bars and roar
at the sight of a green veil on woman
hat. and. while parading, when she sees a
raised green parasol she scares timid
spectators by her fury. The boy with the
green cap gave her her hatred for the color
green. and it has now become a sort Of
madness with her. She hates green worse
than bull Goes an auction flag, and she
thereby shows not only that she's got a
memory. but that she possesses a sense of
color.
Il am convinced that elephants have
just as good memories as human beings
could name a thousand instances of the
sharpness of their memories. We've got a
seasoned old peanut cruncher of an African
bull elephant that probably knew the flavor
of the circus sawdust long before I began
to teethe-and I'm no gosling-that showed
me- last fall. what rafting good mem
DRY he's got slowed beneath those two
knobs on the top of his conk. Six years
ago we made a fall tour of the northern