Caged

"TIME brings all things"

For eagles in cages, chained raccoons, doleful bobcats leashed to posts on the lawns of Western hotels; for dancing bears, monkeys leashed to street organs; for imprisoned hawks, falcons, caracals and creatures robbed of their swiftness; for leopards padding up and down in cages and lions whose pale eyes blaze till death with longing for the forests they have left behind forever--many persons feel pity, but few utter their pity. John Galsworthy, now visiting the U.S., has pitied many social animals. Last week he enunciated (from a Manhattan radio station) his views on the caging of wild ones:

"With extreme diffidence... I draw attention to the . . . custom of caging live birds and live animals and keeping them caged or chained up as a show. . . . I am not speaking of zoos. There is much to be said against zoos, but I am speaking of the caging of animals as a private enterprise. . . . It is queer that curiosity leads to this . . . cruelty. It isn't, I suppose, for an Englishman to appeal to Americans to abate an abuse, but. . . to deprive wild animals of their freedom is a dreadful thing . . . a slow death. . . ."

Squirrel

Near Denver, Col., one Meeples Moe, Norwegian -born beet-field worker, captured a baby squirrel four years ago, trained it to indicate by jerking its tail under which of two teacups had been placed a nut.

Proud of his pet, Worker Moe despatched it to his grandmother, Fru Sigurd Bugg-Moe at Bergen, Norway. Fru Bugg-Moe was bitten by the squirrel while attempting to make it perform on Christmas Eve, 1925.

Moved to deep smoldering wrath, she did not chastise the animal at the time, waited until her husband returned from a sea voyage last week, charged him to shoot the squirrel while she waited on the porch. Impetuous, Herr Bugg-Moe fired upon the squirrel without pondering his aim. The bullet missed, plowed through a window of the house, pierced one of Fru Bugg-Moe's wrists as she held her fingers to her ears.

The squirrel escaped.

Death of Krao

As it must to all men, death came last week to Krao Farini, "the missing link," who had a long black beard and monkey hands. She died of influenza in Manhattan (where she was with Ringlings' circus).

A German professor named Farini found Krao in Siam in 1883. Mountaineers declared that the devil in the shape of a baboon had frightened her mother before her confinement. Intrigued by the story and charmed by the gentle manners of the bearded girl, her shy looks and silences, Professor Farini took her to Berlin and had her finely educated. But evil fortune fell on him; he was forced to place his ward in the Brandenburg Dime Museum in Philadelphia, where she was first exhibited.

She had no cartilage in her nose. Hair covered her body and grew monkey-wise (up instead of down) on her arms and legs.

She had cheek-pouches in which she could carry food. Her fingers would bend until they lay flat on the back of her hand. She had two marmosets which she fondled like children, and indeed they bore a noticeable resemblance to her; they would sit in her lap, gazing with sad eyes into her underslung face. She spent her spare time crocheting, but she read widely and spoke four* languages. Cultivated people were astonished when they talked with her.

Zipp Ill

Numerous befreckled urchins sorrowed for a moment last week, at news that Zip, the "What-is-it-Man," widely popular in sideshows, lay ill of pneumonia at Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan.

To mature persons Zip has always been lacking in appeal. His sharply domed cranium, monkey-fur suit, and ingrowing personality, seem all too slight an excuse for the sizable cheques which he has drawn for many years from the Barnum & Bailey and Ringling Brothers circus.

For a certain class not easy to define Zip possesses, however, a strong appeal. Recently one of his admirers, a swaggering white tusked rough, burly and begrimed, cried out: "Zip's a gentleman! Lots of freaks spits in most people's faces that they don't like, but Zip hardly ever does!"

*Some despatches reported seven.