ELEPHANTS AFRAID OF MICE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 9, 28 February 1891, Page 19

ELEPHANTS AFRAID OF MICE.

A keeper engaged in Barnum’s show tells the following story : —When we went into winter quarters we built a sort of rough barrack for the three elephants, and I was appointed to take care of them through the winter. We fed them on hay, vegetables, and some giain. About two o’clock one morning, when we had been in the city some three weeks, I was aroused by a terrible commotion and trumpeting in the elephant house. Hastily lighting my lantern, I opened a small side door, and stepped into the large room where their cribs and beds were. All three of the elephants were standing close together on one side, ‘ blowing,’ and turning this way and that, exhibiting every symptom of affright. The nozzles of their trunks were high in the air, and they were waving them to and fro. ‘ Tol,’ I shouted, ‘what’s the matter? Old Zen, what ails you?’ At that they all three came crowding close around me like terrified children, and the little two-year old fellow, Demetrius, actually hid the nose of his trunk in the breast of my frock. I. searched all the apartments with the lantern, and kicked over the straw, but could not find any cause for their fright. What had scared them so was more than I could imagine. They became composed after a while, and I left them. But they did not lie down again that night. The next night, about one o’clock, there was a similar fright, and I hurried into the apartment and searched again, but without success. I eat down, intending to remain with them till they had become quiet. I had been sitting there fifteen or twenty minutes, when some mice began to squeak and rustle under the straw in one corner. In an instant the elephants began trumpeting again. Up went their trunks, and they ‘ blowed ’ and fairly trembled with terror. So it was only mice that had given them such a fright. I had a laugh at their expense, for it certainly was amusing to see those animals whimpering and shaking, with their trunks held high over my head, in absolute terror of those tiny creatures. They almost trod on me, they were so fearful lest I should go away and leave them. I diove out the mice, and had to sit with my big babies tor nearly an hour before they were willing to be left alone. A Tale of a Cat.—Mr E. G. Aldridge has placed on record a story about a railway cat, which deserves lepetition. ‘ Some years ago,’ he says, ‘ a dark tabby was in the habit of “ working ” the Somerset and Doiset between Burnham and Wimboine, or at least a portion of that distance. It was the custom of the cat, on the arrival of the train at a station, to leap from the engine and to disappear amongst the passengers and luggage, but, on a premonitory whistle from the locomotive, the cat would hurriedly let urn and take its accustomed place with the driver. At the end of the day master and cat went to their home at Welle. Like many another “servant of the company ” the animal was destined to be “ killed upon the railway.” ’