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

Without delay, Dohong started in with his lever to pry off the remaining boards of the wall, but this movement was promptly checked. Our next task consisted in making long bolts by which the brackets of the horizontal bars were bolted entirely through the partition walls and held so powerfully on the other side that even the lever could not wreck them. As soon as the brackets were made secure, Dohong turned his attention to the two large sleeping boxes which were built very solidly on the balcony of his cage. Both of those structures he tore completely to pieces,--always working with the utmost good nature and cheerfulness. Realizing that they could not exist in the cage with him, we gave him a permit to tear them out--and save the time of the carpenters. Dohong's use of his lever was seen by hundreds of visitors, and one frequent visitor to the Park, Mr. L. A. Camacho, an engineer, was so much impressed that he published in the Scientific American an illustrated account of what he saw. For a long period, Dohong had been more or less annoyed by the fact that he could not get his head out between the front bars of his cage, and look around the partition into the home of his next- door neighbor. Very soon after he discovered the use of the lever, he swung his trapeze bar out to the upper corner of his cage, thrust the end of it out between the first bar and the steel column of the partition, and very deftly bent two of the iron bars outward far enough so that he could easily thrust his head outside and have his coveted look.