Side Show Studies | Page 5

stories of former encounters which he related. His own body bears the scars of many a battle with his savage charges, but he has discontinued giving personal exhibitions with them in the large cage, because his wife has developed a prejudice against having him brought to her in fragments, and he has found that the training of trainers is a far more difficult task than the education of wild animals.
"Yes, any man who follows this business carries his life in his hands," he said in answer to a question from the Stranger within the gates. "You helped to care for poor Bonavita to-night, after Baltimore finished with him, so you know what a lion's jaws can do. I've seen 'em chewed up as bad as that and get over it, but they never get quite the same again. Leave the business? No; it is like the sea: a man who takes to it keeps it up until the time comes when he doesn't recover, but after a bad accident he usually takes another breed of animals.
"The worst sight I ever saw was about five years ago, when one of our performing bears turned on its trainer and seized his arm. He worried it as a terrier would a bone for a good twenty minutes before we could drive him off, and the bear died from the punishment we gave him. The man's arm isn't much use to him now, but he is crazy for me to give him another group of animals to train, which I can't do because a man needs two good pairs of limbs when he gets into the exhibition cage." He told of many accidents which had happened to himself and his employees, most of them through their own carelessness, born of constant association with their charges who never miss the opportunity which the shortest instant of forgetfulness gives them.
[Illustration: "A constant procession of small animals moving down his throat."]
"I said that bear attack was the worst sight I ever saw, and it was; but something happened here last year which impressed me more because it was so mysterious. A friend of mine in Florida shipped me a box of rattlers, which he wrote had been 'attended to,' and I supposed that their poison fangs had been extracted. They were delivered just before the performance started and I ripped a board off the box and stuck my hand in, grabbing them one by one and throwing them into the den as if they were garter snakes.
"The man who took care of the snakes was out on the ballyhoo, walking around with the gander following him to advertise the show; and when he came in he looked them over and found that each one had as pretty a pair of fangs as you would wish to see. He told me about it and I confess that it gave me a gone feeling in the pit of my stomach, for I remembered how I had felt around for them in the box with my bare hands.
"I am pretty busy while a performance is going on, so I told him to let them alone until I had a chance to examine them. Ninety per cent. of the accidents which occur in a menagerie comes from the disregard of ordinary precautions or the disobedience of orders, and I had a presentiment that something was going to happen and I was keeping an extra vigilant eye on the performers in the big exhibition cage. Well, it happened, all right; but not in the way that I expected.
"The snake man instead of getting back on the ballyhoo where he belonged, stood around the snake cage, watching the new rattlers, and along came a couple of gazabos who commenced talking about them. One of them was the wise guy, who always knows about how the animals are doped so they won't bite and all that other information which isn't so. He commenced explaining how the snakes were harmless, because their teeth had been pulled, and giving a lot of misinformation about them. The snake man listened until he couldn't stand it any longer and then he stuck his hand into the cage and grabbed one of the rattlers by the neck.
"'Fangs pulled, eh?' says he, and he made the rattler open his mouth and show a perfect pair of stingers. The wise guy took one look at them and fled, and the snake man would have carried it off all right, only he was so busy calling a few choice names after him that he placed the snake back in the cage instead of throwing it in, and the rattler struck him before he could draw his hand out. He had a clown make-up on, so I couldn't tell whether he was pale