Situation in the Animal Kingdom

FLORA & FAUNA

"God help the horse and the driver too," sang the Irish Poet James Stephens, "and the people and beasts who have never a friend."

Like the people, the beasts of the world needed help in this worst of postwar winters, but they were not all friendless. Some beasts set out to help themselves. In Britain, Lincolnshire crows, hard put to find fodder under the heavy snows, were attacking sheep; one herder last week reported three sheep killed by the raiders. In the U.S., a huckster's horse with a will of his own staged a sit-down strike smack in the middle of a busy Baltimore street.

In Evesham on the River Avon, a respectable British workhorse named Smokey who had long frightened picnickers by stealing and eating their sandwiches also took on sterner ways. A mild-looking animal who pulls the town's garbage wagon from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (with a half-hour break for lunch), Smokey indulged his passion for sandwiches only on Sundays and holidays when he was free to roam on the riverbank; once when a cautious lady picnicker hid her lunch under a coat, Smokey ate both lunch and coat.

Recently Smokey made for the lunch basket of Angler Richard Delaney, and Delaney tried to fend him off. Smokey promptly pushed the fisherman into the river. Delaney sued, and last week an Evesham judge awarded him -L-37 75 damages. But Evesham's mayor and corporation were loyal to the end. "Why should we sack Smokey?" they said. "He's a nice old fellow."

Well-Heeled Swans. A few of the beasts lacked friends. From German Tiergarten many a quadruped had vanished into a stewpot. In Vienna a dozen Schonbrunn Zoo camels, whose colorful history included careers in a traveling circus, and a stretch with the Russian Army as gun carriers, ended up as steaks. But in Malmo, Sweden, a bank account established in 1941 by bird-loving citizens to cover the needs of visiting swans had grown to 4,000 kroner (over $1,000).

Five Malmo elephants also found a loyal friend in their trainer, Hugo Schmidt, former employee of the German-owned Carl Hagenbeck circus. When Sweden's Government ordered the elephants sold as alien property, Hugo promptly turned them loose on Malmo's streets. Running wild, they broke lampposts, smashed windows right and left and generally terrified the inhabitants until Schmidt got them rounded up. "Sweden," sobbed Trainer Schmidt as his beasts were taken in charge, "is making a great mistake. Those elephants love each other. If they are parted, they will die."

-L-1 per Curse. Sordid cash was responsible for London Pet Shopkeeper George Palmer's sudden interest in cussing parrots. Pubs, cafes, and even maiden ladies were demanding birds with rich vocabularies as never before, and last week Shopkeeper Palmer was offering to buy parrots on a basis of -L-1 per each perfected cuss word up to 50. But only unreasoning love could account for the lepidopterological kleptomaniac who took 2,700 mounted butterflies from three Australian museums. London's Scotland Yard thinks it knows who did it but it cannot figure out the motive.

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