Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1875 — A Desperate Ox. [ARTICLE]

A Desperate Ox.

A small tragic drama has just been enacted in Paris which seems to throw a good deal of light on the probable effects of climate on animal character. The actors in the scene were worthy of La Fontaine—an ox, a bull-dog, a number of gardiem de paix, and some private citizens of the quarter of La Villette. The ox was one of a troop proceeding to the great market in that region, and whether owing to an instinctive horror of his approaching doom, or in consequence of “ the cries of the inhabitants of the quarter,” he became animated with an unfriendly spirit toward the latter, and, with mischievous intent, rushed full gallop into a neighboring passage or court-yard. Thereupon a door was shut and a pitched battle ensued between the animal and the two or three gardiens who had followed in pursuit. These valiant warriors hoped at first to gain an easy victory by the sole use of their swords. But they were mistaken and had to flee for their lives round the circle of the confined arena. Meanwhile the tenants of houses overlooking the court-yard resorted to the lasso trick, endeavoring to entangle the monster’s legs or neck in nooses of cord and rope. Here again the intended victim turned the tables on his assailants by dragging one of them down, rope and all, from his window. At length firearms were resorted to, and one of the gardiens, drawing a revolver, fired all its seven barrels into the sides of the ox, without, however, doing much apparent damage. The next strategic movement was an appeal to heavy artillery in the shape of a chassepot. Even then, however, it required three deliberate shots from a sapeur pompier sauvetewr to make an end of the poor beast. But the most characteristic episode in the whole affair was the attitude of the dog, who, although described as a u gros chien buU-dogue," was quite unequal to the occasion, and crouched basely in the corner, oblivious of the world-wide reputation of his ancestors and his ancestral land. Either the breed of horned cattle in France must have very wonderfully improved in strength and courage, or else the air of Paris, nowise apt to calm the pugnacity either of man or beast, must operate strangely in soothing the ferocity of the acclimatized genus bulldogue. The reason that a Nevada murderer didn’t escape when the jail-door was accidentally left unlocked was “ because he didn’t have a clean shirt to go in.” He to a man of taste. * ‘