The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

The leopard is usually a vicious beast. When brought to bay it fights with great fury and success. The black leopard is supremely vicious and intractable. Nearly all leopards hate training, and I have seen two or three leopard "acts" that were nerve-racking to witness because of the clear determination of all the animals to kill their trainer at the first opportunity. The status of the big Alaskan brown bear has already been referred to in terms that may stand as an estimate of its courage. Really, it is now in the same mental state as the grizzly bears of the days of Lewis and Clark, and the surplus must be shot to admonish the survivors and protect the rights of man. THE RAGE OF A WILD BULL ELK. One of the most remarkable cases of rage, resentment and fighting courage in a newly captured wild animal occurred near Buttonwillow, California, in November 1904, and is very graphically described by Dr. C. Hart Merriam in the Scientific Monthly for November 1921. The story concerns the leader of a band of the small California Valley Elk (Cervus nannodes) which it was desired to transport to Sequoia Park, for permanent preservation. The bull refused to be driven to the corral for capture, so he was roped, thrown, hog-tied and hauled six miles on a wagon. This indignity greatly enraged the animal. At the corral he was liberated for the purpose of driving him through a chute and into a car. From his capture and the jolting ride the bull was furious, and he refused to be driven. His first act was to gore and mortally wound a young elk that unfortunately found itself in the corral with him. Then he was roped again and his horns were sawn off. At first no horseman dared to ride into the corral to attempt to drive the animal. Finally the leader of the cowboys, Bill Woodruff, mounted on a wise and powerful horse who knew the game quite as well as his rider, rode into the corral with the raging elk, and attempted to drive it.