LOVE & HATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 September 1938, Page 8

LOVE & HATE

ELEPHANT’S INTELLIGENCE FAMOUS CIRCUS SHOWMAN’S REMINISCENCES. STORY OF BLACK DIAMOND. Most animal trainers consider that elephants have a higher intelligence than any other animal, and approach man in mental capacity. The late Al G. Barnes, famous circus showman, found that not only do they think in the manner of man, they are similar in emotions. They love and they hate. Take the remarkable case of Black Diamond, whose story Mr Barnes tells in one of the best books written about circus animals and performers, “Master Showman.” When he secured Diamond for his show in 1927, “Curly” Prickett had been the elephant’s keeper for about seven years. Diamond doted on Curly, would take his head in his mouth and with his trunk and tusks, lift him from the ground; he would even reach out with his trunk and pull Curly away from his wife when she stopped to talk to him, for he was fiercely jealous. Curly handed him over to another trainer, and went farming in Texas. A year later he visited the show at Dallas and looked up his old friend. Diamond trumpeted with joy and held him in embrace with his trunk. EXECUTION OF AN ELEPHANT. When the time came to say good-bye and Curly started off, Diamond screamed: and tears coursed down his cheeks. Immediately he had gone, the elephant trumpeted with rage and tried to wrench his chains apart. A year passed, and the circus played in Corsicana, Texas. Diamond again saw Curly as he was being taken from the train to the lot. Curly, standing by a car talking to Mrs Eva Donohoe, on whose ranch he. then worked, called Diamond’s name. Diamond turned his head sharply, then rushed forward, caught Curly in the back with his tusks and tossed <im over the car, breaking his wrist. His thwarted love had turned to a desire to kill. He paused and looked at Mrs Donohoe. All the old jealousy welled up. He plunged at her and struck. She fell to the ground with arm uplifted. Screaming with rage, he threw his tons of fury at her and jabbed with his tusks.

Pandemonium ensued. A bystander ran to Mrs Donohoe and tried to lift her out of reach but Diamond snatched at her, lifted her in the air, slammed her to the ground. Again the man rescued her; again Diamond wrenched her from him. The third time they got her away. Both victims were rushed to hospital, where Mrs Donohoe died.

It took a long time to subdue Diamond. “In his car,” Mr Barnes says, “Diamond lapsed into sullen silence. He acted as if he was satisfied, now that he had avenged himself on the woman had had taken his beloved keeper away from him, although the hurt would never heal.” For the rest of the day he stood passively in his car, ignoring his food. The townspeople demanded Diamond’s death. Chained, he was led. out to execution and shot after most of the circus folk had left the scene, weeping.

Babe, Mr Barnes’s latest female elephant, was unusually intelligent. When she was a baby she rode in an express car, Mr Barnes in a Pullman. During the night he was awakened and told that Babe was wrecking the car.

“The attendant was so frightened that he huddled in one corner of the car, while Babe bombarded him with packages. He was yelling and dodging packages when I arrived, and Babe seemed to think it was a great joke to try to score a bull’s-eye with a ten-pound bundle.” After tying her shorter and piling the packages away from her, Mr Barnes went back to the sleeper. But the train kept stopping and re-start-ing; the crew were mystified, the en-gine-driver furious. At last the mystery was solved. Babe had been play-i ing with the alarm cord. “I found her, hidden from the attendant by a pile of bundles, trying to pull the cord out by the roots with her little trunk. Because she couldn’t play with the packages she had found a new way to amuse herself. For the rest of the trip I had to ride the express car to keep her out of mischief.” TUSKO’S NIGHT OUT. Tusko, who stood 12ft 4in, weighed over ten tons, and had hauled logs in Tibetan lumber camps, once ran amuck in Seattle. Throwing aside his rider in the ring he picked up a limousine with his tusks and thrust it on top of another; hurled chickenhouses and coops high in the air; pushed down a telegraph pole; charged a two-storey frame house and moved it several feet off its foundations; snapped the doors of a garage, pushed the car inside it through the wall and emerged with it; uprooted apple trees in an orchard and threw them about like matchsticks.

Then he lunged into a large barn. Out came an old man half-crazed with fright, yelling: “Come take your elephant away .... he’s eatin’ all ,my whisky mash!” The place was evidently a nest of moonshiners. Tyler, the circus manager, resolved to let Tusko eat all the mash he wished, and pay the damage. At about 2 a.m. Tusko reappeared, joyously drunk: “The big bull threw timbers and boards of the wrecked barn high through the air in playful abandon. It was a beautiful warm night and he began frolicking on the mountain-side in the moonlight. Stimulated by the alcohol and revelling in his freedom, he kicked his heels up in imitation of a gambolling lamb of mountainous proportions, stood on his head, and went through various contortions.” It was Tusko’s night out. After about an hour of this, he tottered over to some pine trees, leaned against them, and fell asleep.