ELEPHANT “ON THE LOOSE.”

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143976, 19 December 1912, Page 3

ELEPHANT “ON THE LOOSE.”

A JOYOUS HOUR IN PARIS. The elephant Agra came out of the goods station at the Gere d’Orleans with two other elephants, who walked with docile tread. They shouldered their way along, moving at a pace that did not vary, and making no sound. But in Agra’s blood a fire smouldered,' and quite suddenly, as Mr. Kipling has expressed it of another elephant, “something happened inside his head. 1 * As the result or that something (says the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegragh), he realised that he (Agra)did not desire any longer to walk silently and with unvarying pace at the pleasure of four “Agents” of Paris. Thus it came about that police agent X found himself suddenly in the kennel. Agra had deposited him there with one simple gesture. When he got up and looked round the, two other elephants were still there. But Agra had gone. Agra was in the boulevards. At that moment he had stopped at a wine shop—to stave in the door. Three doors higher up he charged a block of mansions, burst through the doorway into a courtyard, and broke what there was to break. There was not much, and in a couple of minutes Agra was on the boulevard again. There were police, many police, and a trainer, whose eye Agra did not seek to catch. They barred his way for a second or two, until tSey realised that i Agra really wanted to pass. A little further on, after staving in the door, Agra entered a second court, and smashed everything he could see in it. Then he found an inner door leading into the back room of a .tobacco shop, and trampled, with justice, on the stock of State matches and cigarettes. After that he strayed on the boulevard. A corps of police cyclists came up with him at the Pont do Bercy. He was weary, and went with them peaceably by the Place de la Bastille to the Boulevard Beaumarchais. But at the corner of the Rue Daval his eye lighted on a cafe. There was i, more to break in the cafe than there had been in the courts, but Agra broke it all. M. and Madame Vaux, the proprietors of the cafe, sleeping in the room behind, awoke to the sound of a fusillade of chairs and tables. In their alarm they raised cries. Agra stopped his table-turning and put his head through the bedroom door. There was no one there, M. and Madame Vaux having swiftly retreated at the apparition. Agra danced upon the mattress and upon the pillows, and presently walked out of the bedroom shamelessly with a pillow on each of his two fore feet. ' This adventure was his downfall. When the strayed reveller emerged thus upon the boulevard at the matutinal hour of 4 a.m., he found a whole brigade of pompiers waiting to receive him. Round his encumbered feet they slipped sure cords, and Agra was taken. , The little escapade may cost Agra’s trainer £4OO.