HAGENBECK ON WILD LIFE

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 October 1931, Page 12

HAGENBECK ON WILD LIFE

KEEPERS IN CONSTANT PERILThe days of the great American West with its colourful hero —the master of the lasso and the six-shooter who snared with cunning skill the horns of darting, twisting steers or blazed the spots out of playing cards—are gone, but not so the lariat or the aim of a Kit Carson. These still survive, though far from their native habitat, according to Carl Hagenbeck, wild .animal dealer.

On the outskirts of Hamburg, Germany, rope throwing and markmanship are still flourishing arts. Here lies the central headquarters of Hagenbeck Bros., Incorporated, greatest wild animal collecting organisation in the world. Carl Lawrence Hagenbeck, 22-year-old grandson of Lorenz Hagenbeck, founder of the business, paused over a cup of tea to speak admiringly of the iron nerves of men who capture and tame the fierce denizens of the jungle.

“At the Hamburg office the training is thorough,” said Mr Hagenbeck to a “New York Herald Tribune” representative. “One must shoot, ride, lasso to the cinema standards of Tom Mix. It is a common sight to see men armed with housewives’ brooms strolling about unconcernedly in the cages of lions, leopards, bears and wild cats. “Every now and then there is a tragedy, and there is never a moment without its peril, for no animal ever can be completely tamed. They will let you pet them to-day and try to eat you to-morrow.” Mr Hagenbeck told about one keeper who had unwittingly incurred the hate of an otherwise docile elephant, and who was suddenly seized from behind and hurled to his death against the iron bars of the enclosure. “Then there was the case of the drunken'lion tamer,” said Mr Hagenbeck, “who was set upon by five beasts. Attracted by the dying man’s cries, our redoubtable Sawade, most noted animal trainer in the world, who has been confined to the hospital no less than twenty times after battles with animals, rushed to a futile rescue. Inside the cage the keeper had been clawed into a state of lost identity. The lions were preparing to dismember the corpse, when Sawade, armed only with a spade handle, sprang into the cage and whacked the murderers into full retreat with one hand while with the other he dragged out the unfortunate man’s body.” “You take the time of the two pythons,” he continued. “One day the head keeper went up to a cage of thirty or forty pythons, eight to ten feet in length. He leaned into the cage, in fact, half his body was in the cage. One of the snakes came along and locked his jaws on the side of the poor fellow’s face. Pythons are not poisonous, you know, but if they bite you are set. “The man started to cry. In another moment a second snake had locked his jaws on the other side of his face. We managed to rescue him, but the poor fellow’s face swelled up like a balloon. The snakes hadn’t bitten him, but the contact with their teeth'causes this swelling.”

BLACK PANTHER TAKES PRIZE.

Mr Hagenbeck does not consider the tiger the most ferocious of animals. “The tiger is fierce and a wonderful battler," he said. “Sometimes they overcome lions. But by far the most ferocious, the most unrelenting savage animal is the black panther. That animal is always dangerous. It appears to be always waiting for a chance to take revenge on the humans who caged it. This beautiful creature will be lying apparently fast asleep in the extreme rear of its cage and, if an unwary spectator gets half an inch too close to the cage the big black cat leaps like a flash against the bars, reaching out its paws with its cruel long talons to tear its victim.” He said that, while he had seen freak domestic animals, he had never seen a. freak wild animal. He also stated that any wild animal can be kept in captivity with the right food, space and treatment. Sometimes, however, mere laymen developed the reckless, courage of animal masters. Mr Hagenbeck told the story of an elephant which escaped one night from the Hagenbeck grounds. When discovered Jumbo was flying before an infuriated woman over whose freshly-planted potato patch he had wandered. Before her

brisk barrage of earth clumps and stones the mastodon was perceived legging it to safety, emitting loud squeals that seemed to implore an immediate armistice. “For who can stem the torrent of a woman’s fury?” “After man has served an apprenticeship of about ten years on the average at our Hamburg headquarters, he is, perhaps, assigned to field duty and commissioned to bring in game,’ explained Mr Hagenbeck. Over the wilds of Afric the whirr of the lassoos of our hunters is a familiar sound,” he continued. “Sometimes the noose settles over the neck of a giraffe, Sometimes it catches the horn of a plumb-mad rhino, who is quickly taken for a neat flop and then pinioned. “In the North, when the game is polar bears, the baby bruin is lassoed from the deck of a motor launch. In the boat an expert marksman rarely takes more than one slug to sink a bear who invariably attempts resistance to the kidnapping. “For the elephant family, however, a little strategy is necessary. A herd is startled by cries, horns, shots. When the stampede gets under way the little fellows cannot keep up the pace. Falling to the rear, they are picked off with lariats. “But for this ruse,” added Mr Hagenbeck, “it would be extremely difficult to capture little Jumbos. "When a herd of elephants is standing still the bulls show tremendous courage and chivalry in rushing to the aid of any little elephant in trouble.”