Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1912 — Municipal Elephant Serves as a Thief Chaser [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Municipal Elephant Serves as a Thief Chaser

M'NNIE, the municipal elephant, the other day Rescued Mrs. Jennie Plau, 3338 Paris avenue, from three hoodlums in the Brookside Park woods. Minnie dispersed the youeg men and nearly caught one of them In an exciting chase down the Bide of one of the peaks that rise across Big Creek opposite the Fulton road entrance. Mrs. Plau is the wife of Paul Plau, Minnie’s keeper. She had taken her young son, Arthur, eight years old, to the park to accompany . Minnie and her husband on their morning walk before the visitors began to throng the meadows and woods. Minnie is becoming very sure-foot-ed and climbs hills like a goat, Plau Bays. On the morning of the ad-

venture he had taken on a high path, fringed with bushes, that runs near the edge of the cliff. Mfs. Plau and her son had preceded the keeper and the pachyderm by 100 feet or more. Suddenly three young men Jumped from behind a clump of trees and one of them made for her. Mrs. Plau carried a handbag with S4O in it in notes and she screamed. Plau and the elephant arrived in a hurry. The boys had not seen the elephane, which had been concealed by the bushes. “One of the boys was only a few fhet away from Mrs. Plau when Minnie saw him,” said Plau. “I had heard the elephant snort a little while before and I thought either a man or a dog was near. “ ‘Go after him, Minnie,’ I told the elephant and she did. : It was the first time I had ever seen her try to injure anyone and she surely did try to get that fellow. He dodged behind a tree and then ran down hill. Minpie went after him, but the grade saved him. Minnie is slow in going down hill.”