III. Here Come the Elephants! edit
That is what the children shout when a circus parade marches through a town. The elephant is the children's delight. Draped in purple and gold he walks with the tread of an emperor before a conquered army. All the other wild beasts are in cages, but he, the largest and strongest of them all, a three-ton mountain of an animal, is led by his keeper as if he were a big, good-natured dog. And oh, if there is a baby elephant the children just about go crazy.
No wonder! Baby elephants are scarce. Even in her home on African plains, or in the East Indian jungle, a mother elephant has a baby only once in ten or fifteen years, so there are never more than a few babies at a time in a big herd of a hundred or more elephants. It's a great event when one is born in captivity. Such a baby! He weighs two hundred pounds at birth, is nearly three feet high and has a funny little trunk about as long as your twelve-inch ruler. And you never saw such a baby for growing! At the age of one year he weighs a half a ton. When he is hungry he squats in front of his mama, spreading his hind legs out behind him, pokes his head up between her front legs and sucks milk with his mouth, just like a calf. She pets him with her trunk while he nurses, and she doesn't wean him until he is two years old.
A baby elephant is as solemn as an Indian papoose. But in his own clumsy way he is very playful. He plays hide-and-seek between his mother's legs, and pulls her foolish little tail with his trunk. When anything alarms him, he gets right under her and shuffles along that way. And when she crosses a stream he climbs on her back until he learns to swim. In one thing he doesn't get over being a baby until he is a grandfather. He spends half his life cutting new teeth. An elephant has twenty-four grinding teeth in all, but he cuts and uses only four at a time. As one set wears down a new set appears just behind. Maybe it is cutting teeth that makes a big, fifty-year-old elephant peevish, sometimes.
There is a secret that a very young baby elephant can tell you that even his mama doesn't know. Ages ago there were elephants and mammoths and mastodons that were much like them, only twice as big as any elephant living today. They lived all over Europe and America, some of them away up in the coldest countries wherepolar bears live today. They were covered thick with wool and hair, and had long hairy manes like those of the buffaloes, falling over huge curved tusks twice as long as a tall man. Today, you know, elephants havn't a sign of a hair on them. Their thick gray hides are as bare as rubber blankets. But baby elephants, when first born, have a scanty covering of silvery brown wool all over their pink, piggy skins. That tells very plainly of a time when all elephants had fur.
It takes an elephant thirty years to grow up to eleven feet in height, twelve in length, with tusks and trunk six or eight feet long, and a weight of three tons. He has plenty of time, for, if he is lucky, he may live to be a hundred or more years old. The hide of a full grown elephant is an inch thick, and full of folds and creases and wrinkles. The ears of an African elephant are as big and floppy as rubber door mats. He can smell as well as a dog or a bear, and see and hear much better. His legs are as thick and solid as the pillars under a portico, and his feet are scolloped with five thick toes around a pad. An elephant's knees and elbows are so near the ground that it is hard for him to get up and down. He can't curl his legs under him as many animals do, but kneels and sprawls his hind legs out behind. Sometimes he seems to say: "What's the use in trying to lie down at all?" So, when he is sleepy, he just leans up against a big tree, or a rock. And he has a stiff neck all the time. His neck is so short and thick that it is very little use for turning, although he can toss his head up and down like a bull.
For such an e-nor-mous animal the elephant is wonderfully active. He can shuffle along, in his clumsy way, nearly as fast as a horse can run. East Indian elephants climb steep mountains as pack animals, and are very sure-footed. All elephants are good swimmers and hard fighters if attacked. They can charge the enemy like cavalry horses. Their tusks are terrible weapons, and no other animal living has such a wonderful tool-chest as the elephant's trunk. It is a nose to breathe and smell with, an upper lip, a finger and thumb, a stout arm, a water tank, a club to fight with, and a musical instrument all in one. As hollow as a garden hose, that trunk is made up of forty thousand muscles laid length-wise, cross-wise and on the bias, in a net-work that gives it great strength and variety of motion. With its trunk the elephant can pick up a peanut, pet its baby, pull a small tree up by the roots, give itself a shower or dust bath, break off a leafy branch and shoo away the flies, slapa saucy tiger senseless, and bellow like the bass horn in a brass band.
But why is it called trunk?
Don't you suppose nearly every little boy and girl in the world has asked that question? And got an answer something like this: "Oh, just because it is." But that is no answer. The name is really trompe, a French word meaning trumpet, for the trumpeting sound the animal makes. English people misunderstood the word and changed it to trunk. Besides it looks like the stem or trunk of a small tree turned upside down; and there is a hollow tube for forcing pellets through, something like a pop-gun, that is called a trunk. So trunk seems just about as good a name as trompe, doesn't it?
Elephants live in herds like buffaloes. There are from twenty-five to one hundred in a herd. They wander about together in the woods and on the open plains of Africa and India, wherever there is plenty of grass, low plants and trees, near water. They sleep in the forest. As early as three o'clock, long before the sun rises, a herd is on the march. They go in single file, the big bulls in front breaking a path through the thickest jungle. Then come the cows, and last the mothers with babies. This is the order in which Indians travel, the warriors ahead and the children in the rear.
If danger threatens, the bulls trumpet a warning. All the others stop, and the bulls line up to give battle to the enemy. Some people think that only the flesh-eating animals are dangerous. This is a mistake, as you must know when you remember how savage some bulls of domestic cattle are. African bull elephants are so fierce the lion tucks his tail between his legs and slinks away, when he hears one trumpeting. The tiger sometimes attacks the smaller East Indian elephant, and often gets the worst of it.
African explorers and travellers say a charging bull elephant is a grand and terrible sight. He blows his mighty trumpet in a blast that can be heard for miles, lowers his head with its six foot tusks, and tosses his trunk up out of danger. He knows how easily that precious member, all delicate muscles and nerves, might be injured by claw or spear. When a tiger springs, the bull catches him on the tusks, tosses him twenty feet in the air, gives him a swinging blow with the trunk as he comes down that stuns him, then pins him to the earth with the tusks, or tramples him under his three tons of weight. It is said that every pair of tusks brought out of Africa has cost one or more human lives.Usually a herd marches to the feeding ground unmolested. There they pull the grass up by the roots, beat the earth off on their front legs, give the bundles neat twists, and poke them back into their mouths. They pull up bushes and break off high leafy branches. They even uproot small trees, prying with the tusks and pulling with the trunks. Cocoanuts are cracked and shelled by rolling underfoot. They are fond of palm nuts, sugar cane and yams, a kind of sweet potatoes. In captivity elephants are fed on hay and carrots, but they just love peanuts, popcorn and candy. A herd of one hundred wild elephants will eat ten tons of food a day.
About sunrise the whole herd takes a bath. They go on a shuffling run to the nearest "ole swimmin'" hole. Into the water they go up to their eyes. They frolic like so many school boys, shouting at the tops of their—trumpets, slapping and splashing water over each other. The babies ride on their mother's backs, slide off and learn to swim. Often a herd plays in the water for an hour. Before coming out they suck up as much as ten gallons of water each, through the hollow trunks and stow it away in water pockets in their stomachs. Later in the day, when they want a drink or a shower bath, they bring this water up and use it. The camel seems to be the only other animal that has storage tanks inside for water.
Old hunters in Africa and India say members of a herd look alike as do members of a human family. Some herds are made up of animals that are large and strong and bright minded. In other herds the animals are smaller, weaker and more stupid. In East India the natives speak of elephants as low caste and high caste, and say there is as much difference as there is between breeds of dogs and horses. And no hunter will go after a "rogue" elephant. A "rogue" is a tramp elephant. For some reason he has left his herd, or been driven out. No other herd will admit him, so he turns sour and becomes very dangerous, fighting every living thing he meets, and destroying what he cannot eat.
Elephants hate flies. The flies and stinging insects of hot countries are large and thick and tough as is the elephant's hide they manage to get into the folds and creases and sting him. He fights his tormentors with shower and dust baths and fly brushes. When they drive him frantic he rushes into the water to wash them off. There he finds a friend. It is the long-legged water crane who stands on the elephant's back and picks out the flies to eat. Sometimes this feathered friend and a baby elephant may both be seen riding on Mama Elephant's back.
Of two things the elephant is afraid—fences and mice. A fence looks like some of the traps used by native tusk-hunters. The flimsiest fence of reeds, bamboo or barbed wire will usually keep a herd of hungry elephants out of a sugar or yam field, or will keep them prisoners inside a stockade. As for a mouse, very likely the elephant thinks it a big insect that will run up his trunk. He throws the trunk up out of danger, bellows with rage and trembles with fear.
The huge African elephant is very wild, hard to tame and teach, and is of uncertain temper. Even the cows have tusks. A good specimen is not often seen in a menagerie. Your papa and mama will remember Mr. Barnum's famous African elephant "Jumbo." The East Indian elephant is smaller, more easily captured and tamed. He readily learns to do useful work and to perform tricks. He becomes fond of a kind master, and likes children, dogs and peaceable animals. He is not brighter than the dog, but because of his size and strength and his wonderful tusks and trunk, he can do a great many things that a dog cannot do. In India, the elephant piles half-ton teak logs in lumber yards, and is used in the timber and stone work of roads and bridges. He can push a cannon across a bog, carry a load over a mountain, and help sportsmen hunt and kill tigers. East Indian rulers all have troops of elephants to use in warfare, and to ride in royal processions. In Siam, the white elephant is a sacred animal and has a place on the national flag.
How old and wise the elephant in the menagerie looks. It is very comical to see such a heavy, clumsy animal stand on his hind legs or his head, dance to music, blow a horn, beat a drum, ring a bell or fire a gun. He kneels to let children and dogs and monkeys climb into a canopied throne on his back, then rises and takes them for a ride. He plays see-saw with another elephant, forms pyramids, rolls barrels, piles boxes and does many other hard things. The elephant has a good memory. He never forgets a trick he has once learned. He remembers an unkindness for years, and is sure to watch patiently for his chance, and to take terrible revenge on a keeper who mistreats him.
Hundreds of years ago the Greeks and Romans trained elephants to perform in their open-air circuses. Ancient writers tell of elephants that rocked cradles of babies whenever they cried, and of others that walked and danced on tight ropes. One writer says thatelephants were sometimes found practising their tricks at night, because they liked to do them, perhaps, or because they had been punished for not performing properly and wanted to know their lessons better. That seems hard to believe, but some trainers of today say they have watched these huge animals saying over their lessons out of school.
Don't you think these clever animals deserve all the petting and peanuts they can get? Some elephants will eat right out of a child's little hand. But you should always ask his keeper if it is safe to feed an elephant in that way, and what he likes best. And be very careful not to touch his precious trunk.