Beasts

Monkeys. When an orchestra, attempting to tabulate animalian reactions to music, played in the monkey gallery at the Philadelphia Zoo last week, the little brown persons were bewildered and enchanted. As the instruments were tuned, the merry apes danced in their cages and cocked their ears. When the drummer tapped his drum, mandrill and marmoset cowered and wept with an uncontrollable fear. As the violins swept up in the frail music of a waltz, they all sat still as statues. Saxophone and trumpet made them run and jump. Then, when the musicians stopped, the monkeys shrilled, squealed, jabbered, in a frenzy of fantastic enthusiasm. At last the bass viol boomed; then all the little monkeys, blinking and peering, pushed their sad faces against the bars.

Elephant. When the same orchestra played outside the house of a twelve-year-old elephant named Poetre, she listened with polite and melancholy attention. As the wild oboes wailed, she bent her huge head in self-conscious sorrow. When the brass horns shouted, she flapped the floor with a map of Africa, her right ear. For violins and cellos, ehe rolled her small bright eye. Then, when the crazy, jazzy saxophone blew a blue note, Poetre filled the geyser-ish trumpet of her nose with air and water, blew out a moan more liquid than the trombone's. In wet clothes and a panic the minstrels scurried off. Squirrels. On the roof of a house in Canandaigua, N. Y., there stood a fat squirrel who looked like "Babe" Ruth. On the limb of an oak tree not far off, stood another. Soon the squirrel on the oak limb picked up an acorn, moistened it as if about to throw a spitball, pirouetted with an acorn clasped in waving paw, then threw a spitball to the squirrel on the roof who caught the pitched nut. Through a whole autumn afternoon these two impudent squirrels thus aped their betters playing baseball. (Such, at any rate, was the substance of a report vouched for by one Clair L. Morey, Canandaigua attorney, and broadcast by the Associated Press.)

Cows. In Cranford, N. J., two mild cows stepped into the middle of a highroad and fell asleep. For one hour, motorists coaxed, kicked, whistled, roared, cursed, stroked. The two would not budge. At last three men who were friends of the cows came by. They--the chief of police, the supervisor of the school, the principal of the school--per- suaded the comfortable cows to leave the smooth, warm surface of their roadbed.

Cat. Their eyes like round sudden stars in the reflection of head- lights, feline debauchees parade on roads at night, killing birds and frightening motorists. Last week near Chillicothe, Ohio, such a fe- line debauchee squatted, yowling and jeering, on a road in front of Mrs. E. C. Hood who was driving her car. Mrs. Hood, startled by the sparkling eyes, drove her car over the side of a bridge, injuring herself, demolishing her car.

Wombat. Near Sydney, Australia, a captive wombat,* the property of one Timothy Sermon, was chained to a post for the entertainment of visitors to Timothy Sermon's ranch. A lanky, nervous creature, this sly marsupial/- spent his days in a hopscotch circular gallop, his nights in forlorn and ridiculous nightmares, or wild nostalgic visions. Last week, Timothy Sermon found his wombat, covered with dirt and excrement, his thin sensitive nose pushed far into the yellow loam, a suicide.

Pig. A fat, big pig last week caught the hiccups. For three nights its pen, in Birmingham, Ala., echoed with a silly incessant guffaw. Owner of the pig, one Joseph St. George, deprived of sleep, surveyed his eccentric porker. He ordered a large plate of "swill" to be brought. This the pig ate greedily and continued hiccupping. Mr. St. George whacked the pig's back with a trowel; still the idiotic grunts continued. Then Mr. St. George soaked the pig with ice cold water; no cure. At last Joseph St. George came with a little perfumed sponge which he pushed against the. pig's snout. Soon the pig slept, the hiccups ceased. Weasel. Soup, beautiful soup. --LEWIS CARROL.

Round and round the vinegar jug The monkey chased the weasel; The monkey stopped to blow his

nose, Wangh! went the weasel.

--OLD RHYME.

Near Seattle, Wash., one Mrs. M. E. Stein was cooking fish. Hearing a commotion outside, she left her kitchen, left the fish frying over the fire and a great jug of spicy soup standing on the floor. When she returned to the kitchen, she first went to "turn" the fish; then she looked at her soup tureen. She stared at her soup tureen; over the edge of it was hanging a grey, silky brush. When Mrs. Stein pulled this brush, she found that it was attached to an animal. From her soup she extracted the pet weasel of her son. Later the son reported that the weasel had been seen spinning in dizzy, hungry fashion about the jug of spicy, beautiful soup.

Worms. In Philadelphia, a gravedigger was busy making a house for a dead man. From the four brown walls of this house, little red worms leaned out, their slim questioning bodies bowing and writhing from round tunnels, like windows or portholes, as they sensed their purveyor working. He, "Joe" (last name unspecified in despatches), struck at one of the worms with a shovel, cutting him in two. Then, about to slaughter another, he scanned the walls of the house he was building. The walls were alive with tiny reptiles. Sliding out of their tunnels, they came writhing into the grave and slithered about his feet. Ten, 20, 30, he counted, standing in amaze. It was as if the whole world's tiny agents of decay had suddenly centred on the dusty pit he was making for a dead man. As big as chisels, as little as rusty pins, the hungry red worms swarmed into the grave. At last, terrified, the gravedigger leaped out of the grave, pitched shovelfuls of dirt to bury the worms, then fled, screeching.

*A large, clumsy, borrowing animal, not totally unlike a pig, which weighs up 100 Ibs. The wombat of Mr. Sermon weighed 67 lbs. when dead.

/-A marsupial is an animal with a pouch for carrying young--opossum, kangaroo, wombat, etc.