Pecks Bad Boy with the Circus | Page 8

we went in, but a big lion bent one eye on pa,
and then he rose up and shook himself and gave a roar and a cough that
sounded like he had the worst case of pneumonia, and he snorted a
couple of times, as though he was saying to the other animals: "Here's
something that will kill you dead, and I want you all to have a piece of
it, raw," and he brayed some more, and all the animals joined in the
chorus, the big tiger lying down on his stomach and waving his tail,
and snarling and showing his teeth like a cat that has located a mouse
hole, and the tiger seemed to say: "O, I saw it first, and it's mine."
The hyena set up a laugh like a man who is not tickled, but feels that it
is up to him to laugh at a funny story that he can't see the point of at a
banquet where Chauncey Depew tells one of his crippled jokes, and pa
was getting nervous. A big grizzly bear was walking delegate in his
cage, and he looked at pa as much as to say: "Hello, Teddy, I was not at
home when you called in Colorado, but you get in this cage, and I will
make you think the Spanish war was a Sunday school picnic beside
what you will get from your uncle Ephraim," and a bob cat jumped up
into the top of his cage and snarled and showed his teeth, and seemed
to say: "Bring on your whole pack of dogs and I will eat them alive."
Pa threw out his chest in front of a monkey cage, and a monkey
snatched his watch, and then all the animals began to laugh at pa just
like a lot of bad boys in school when visitors make a call. Pa went
around to visit all the animals, officially, while I got interested in a
female kangaroo, with a couple of babies, not more than three weeks
old, and I noticed the mother kangaroo made the old man kangaroo, her
husband, stand around and he acted just like some men I have seen who

were afraid to say their souls were their own in the presence of their
wives.
The female kangaroo is surely a wonder, and seems to be built on plans
and specifications different from any other animal, cause she has got a
fur-lined pouch on her stomach, just like a vest, that she carries her
young in. When the babies are frightened they make a hurry-up move
towards ma, the pouch opens, and they jump in out of sight, like a
gopher going into its hole, and the mother looks around as innocent as
can be, as much as to say: "You can search me. I don't know, honestly,
where those kids have gone, but they were around here not more than a
minute ago." And when the fright is over the two heads peep out of the
top of the pouch, and the old man grunts, as much as to say: "O, come
on out, there is no danger, and let your ma have a little rest, 'cause she
is nervous," and then the babies come out and run around the cage, and
sit up on their hind feet and look wise. That kangaroo pouch is a
success, and I wonder why nature did not provide pouches for all
animals to carry their young in. I think Pullman must have got his ideas
for the upper and lower berths of a sleeping car by seeing a kangaroo
pouch. I am going to study the kangaroo and make friends with the old
man kangaroo, 'cause he looks as though he had troubles of his own.
Pa showed up without any coat, while I was kangarooing, and there
was a rip in his pants, and I asked him what was the trouble, and he
said he got too near the cage of a leopard that seemed to be asleep, and
the traitor reached out his paw and gathered in the tail of pa's coat, and
just snatched it off his back as though it was made of paper.
[Illustration: A Leopard Reached Out His Paw and Gathered In the Tail
of Pa's Coat.]
Pa is a little discouraged about his experience in the circus the first day,
but he says it will be great when we get the run of the business. He says
every day will have its excitement. Tomorrow they are going to extract
a tooth from the boa-constrictor, and pa and I are going to help hold
him, while the animal dentist pulls the tooth, and then we scrub the
rhinoceros, and oil the hippopotamus, and get everything ready to start
out