The Zoo Revisited/Chapter 6

OOD-DAY, Jingo. How you are growing! I couldn't put you in a rabbit-hutch, could I?”

“In a rabbit-hutch? I should think not. Whoever heard of an elephant in a rabbit-hutch?”

“I have, and here in Regent's Park, too, and—don't be angry, Jingo!—you are the elephant I saw.”

“What! me in a rabbit-hutch! Well I never! Ha! Ha! Ha! How very ridiculous. Really you must tell me all about it and”—(dropping his voice into a mild aside)—“you don't happen to have such a thing as a bun about you?”

“What do you suppose is in this bag, you old soldier? A pair of boots?” (Giving him a bun.)

“Thank you. In a rabbit-hutch! Ho! Ho! Ho! That was a currant bun, I think, eh?”

“Yes. Do you mean to say you can't tell what you are eating?”

“Well, they are just a leetle small, aren't they? Now when I have six or seven in my mouth at once, I never make any mistake. But one, you see, is, well, it's only one you know, and there's not much to taste in one bun, is there?”

“Tastes differ, Jingo, in size. And do you know, you were such a miserable little creature they had to oil your skin to keep it on your bones. It was all cracking off. And you were cod-liver-oiled, and flanneled, and brandied as if you had been a prince.”

“Dear me, you don't say so! How very interesting! Cod-liver-oil, eh? and brandy you say? Forgotten all about it. Must have been a long time ago.”

“Why, how old do you think you are?”

“I've no idea. But Mr. Bartlett, they say, has been here forty years, and I'm much bigger than he is. I should think I must be about a thousand.”

“A thousand years old? Why you're only thirteen! You're not as old as that little girl there who is waiting to have a ride on your back.”

“You don't say so! How very interesting! Not so old as that little girl, eh? (A mild aside.) You don't happen, I suppose, to have a Thank you, thank you. Same as last time, I think, eh?”

“No. That was a sponge cake. There's really no pleasure in giving you nice things if you don't taste them. I might just as well feed you on that Food for the Animals, twopence a bag, that they sell here.”

“There, don't mention those awful bags: bits of last year's bread, with corners on it like granite. How can you expect me to have any palate when I am filled up every day with stuff that's only fit for road metal? It was quite different once. I could tell an orange from a sponge cake in a jiffy, or anything else, as soon as it was thrown in. But you try standing here with your mouth open half the day as I do, with people throwing in chunks of Spiers and Pond's stale rubbish, and see what your throat gets like. If I put out my trunk for anything the people move off. They think I am going to bite or do something. So the only thing I can do is to hold my trunk up and open my mouth and then they see what I mean. But that's no reason why they should throw so hard as they do, or take advantage of me by trying to fill me up with corks and empty bags—is it? I can't understand little boys at all.”

“I suppose you can't. By the way, do you remember Jumbo?”

“I remember him and that is all. I used to be brought out here to stand by the side of Jumbo just to make people laugh when I walked underneath him. He was killed trying to stop a train, wasn't he?”

“Well, not exactly that. But he wouldn't get out of the way of a train and, after the collision, the train rolled over one side of the embankment and Jumbo over the other.”

“And was the train killed, too?”

“Oh, no; they picked up the train, and it went on again. But Jumbo didn't. And how do you like your life here? Would you rather be in Africa instead?”

“Where is that?”

“That's the place your father and mother came from. You're an African elephant, you know.”

“How do I know?”

“By the size of your ears, of course. Now you needn't get angry. Look at the other elephants' ears: how small they are. That's because they are Indian elephants.”

“And what is Africa like? is it as big as the Zoo, and are there other animals there? Who feeds them? Do they carry children about?”

“Africa is much bigger than the Zoo, and there are plenty of other animals there, and lots of elephants; but not in cages. They all go about as they like. Nobody feeds them—they help themselves, and there are no children to carry about. They have nothing to do.”

“Help themselves, do they! and got nothing to do! Whereabouts is Africa? Can you see it from here? No? I suppose the trees are in the way. Help themselves! and nothing to do! Phew! Catch me eating any of those bags of food for the Animals there! I'd help myself only to sponge cakes and oranges.”

“Oh! there are no sponge cakes and oranges in Africa.”

“No? Well, I don't mind, much! I'd eat Bath buns and apples.”

“But there aren't any Bath buns and apples, either.”

“No? Well, common currant buns, then, and ginger”

“There aren't any buns at all in Africa, nor gingerbread.”

“What! Then in the name of conscience what do the elephants help themselves to?”

“Oh, leaves and grass.”

“Leaves and grass! Thank you. No Africa for me, if that's all I can help myself to. Leaves and grass indeed!”

“I am glad you know when you are well off. Liberty, my dear Jingo, isn't all beer and skittles, when lions and rhinoceroses are going about, and the only men you see try to kill you. Your life here is a safe one, and certainly not dreary, and after all, carrying children up and down is not so bad when you get fed at the end of each trip with cakes and fruit.”

“Oh, yes. It's very well: a trifle monotonous but not hard work. And on Mondays and Saturdays especially I get as much to eat as I can hold. On Bank Holiday I actually had to stop eating. I refused a bun. You needn't shake your head. I did. (Aside.) You don't happen, I

“Yes I do, and this is the last; and, really, when you come to think of it, Jingo, you have had already to-day (so the attendant says) at least two hundred pieces of bread and bun.”

“Oh, that's nothing. I can hold something like two thousand and walk home straight afterwards. Jumbo, I am told, was never known to be properly filled up, except once.”

“When was that?”

“The day before he left the Zoo to go to America. He was eating all day. The people crowded round to feed him, with jelly and chocolate-drops, and all kinds of things. The women peeled his apples for him and took the pips out, and they buttered his sponge cakes. Oh! he had a gaudy time, I tell you. And at last he was stuffed, as tight as could be, and then he began to play with the things they gave him, and got quarrelsome, because he couldn't eat any more. He hit a bank-clerk in the eye with a lump of bread and jam, and ran after an old man with a yard of gingerbread. And as for the oranges! It was something frightful. He bombarded the camels with them until the dromedary bolted into the Refreshment Room. No one could get near him for the apples and bananas that were whizzing about. It was like a general action, with a Gatling firing fruit. Oh, yes! Jumbo was properly filled up that day. I wonder if I ever shall be.”

“Perhaps you may: who knows? But you are not a Jumbo yet, though I hope you will be some day. Jumbo was two feet higher than you are and weighed about a ton more. But you are only a child yet. Your proper age to live is about a century and a half. If you only keep alive you'll see some strange things, Jingo, before you go to the place where all good elephants go. There was an artillery elephant the other day fighting for the Queen in Burmah who had fought for George III. just a hundred years before. And he was the finest elephant in the army then—that was in 1790. So you have plenty of time before you.”