Capers

Zoogoers, like circusgoers, are not so much interested in seeing animals as in seeing animals act. Two years ago some 2,250,000 people flocked to the St. Louis Zoological Park, famed for its animal stunts, to watch two chimpanzees do battle in a boxing ring. This winter St. Louis trainers worked arduously on a new act which they hope will supplant the now-retired fighting apes.

Three 3 1/2-year-old female elephants enter the ring, sit around a table, get three steins filled with colored water which resembles beer.* They sip their drinks, act increasingly tipsy, stagger around the ring, finally gulp down the water. While a trainer sings Show Me the Way To go Home, one by one the elephants sink to the ground, pretend to pass out.

By last fortnight the industrious trainers had taught the elephants to run through these capers without a hitch. Then members of Missouri prohibition clubs and the Anti-Saloon League protested, called the act "not very edifying." Few days later the zoo's board of control watched the elephants perform, called the protest "ridiculous." The show went on, drew enthusiastic applause from its first audiences this week.

P:Last week Chicagoans were still chuckling over capers of another sort. Henry Field,** grandnephew of the late Marshall Field and curator of physical anthropology at the Field Museum, had given a party with a friend at their Lake Shore Drive apartment. Guests, asked to bring live animals, turned up with a deodorized skunk, a singing duck, two colored baby chickens worn on a woman's hat, a white rat which bore a litter of ten during the party. Anthropologist Field's contributions: 1) a seal which he could not get into the freight elevator; 2) an un- housebroken, pregnant camel, whose nuisances were observed by tenants on the floor below.

P:As an added attraction, a Manhattan nightclub with an eye for publicity introduced to its patrons last week a zebra (see cut) with a hangdog expression, accompanied by Frank ("Bring 'Em Back Alive") Buck. To the great delight of photographers, the zebra, after posing wearily for its picture, shook itself from head to foot, tripped Tamer Buck, sent him sprawling to his knees.

*Little known is the fact that elephants like beer, will drink it whenever they get a chance. **Whose engagement was announced last week to Mrs. Placidia White Knowlton of Thomasville, Ga.

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