Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 289, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1913 — HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES

Zoological Park Mystery Solved; Ivan Is Guilty

NEW YORK. —No longer is there any mystery to be solv*ed in the New York zoological park. Ivan is the guilty one, and now the policemen detailed to the park, the night watchman, the keepers and all the officials of the

zoological society need not worry. Ivan thinks the whole matter a joke, and if any one who thinks a bear can’t laugh and enjoy being the perpetrator of something that worried his friends and kept them on the jump for a couple of weeks let him go up to the Bronx and have a talk with Ivan. Ivan is a big, brown peninsular bear. He has been in the park for nearly ten years, and while he is the pet of the keepers and the most popular animal in the bear dens he Is always in mischief. Stealing the keepers’ hats and coats while they are cleaning his cage and hiding them in his cave is an old trick of Ivan’s. For a time it was plenty of fun for him. The keepers who would have to look for

their coats soon learned this trick and paid no attention to it after a time, but just kept on working and gfting into the cave when they were ready to leave the den and get their belongings from Ivan’s hiding place. Two weeks ago Policeman Martin of the Bronx park station heard three sharp blasts of a!) police whistle. In about two minutes it was repeated, and he started to run in the direction in which the sound came from. He was 3 sure that a brother policeman was in trouble and needed help. As he ran through the park two watchmen joined him. The squad looked for the suspicious policeman who wanted aid for half an hour and then gave it up as hopeless and returned to their posts. About an hour later the whistles were again heard and another search was started. Again no one was found. This keit up every night for two weeks. Then by chance Charles Snyder, the assistant curator of small mammals, happened to forget his umbrella one night and returned to the park. He was just walking back of Ivan’s den when he hea-d the three distress whistles given, He was not on the path, but on the gi ass, so Ivan could not hear him walking. Peering through the bars Snyder saw Ivan standing erect, and while he •watched him he heard the bear give three more calls that sounded for all world like the blasts of a policemen’s whistle.