Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1899 — ANIMAL COMBATS. [ARTICLE]

ANIMAL COMBATS.

Beasts that Are Confined in Cages Fight in Sheer Devilment. Fights in sheer devilment sometimes take place between animals in confinement, says Cassell’s Magazine. A short, sharp battle took place in Edmonds’ menagerie between a lion and a tiger just forty years ago. The lion was the same which had escaped from Jamrach’s yard, in what was then Ratcliff highway, and bitten a boy. Mr. Edmonds bought it, and is said to have billed it as “the tiger that swallowed the child.” Of course, the beast was a great draw, but after a few days in its new quarters the tiger managed to draw forward the sliding shutter and squeeze itself into the adjoining den, where a lion was confined. The Hon resented the intrusion, but was immediately seized by the throat, and, though there were tremendous struggles, the fight was practically over as soon as it commenced. The tiger never loosed its hold and in a few minutes the lion was dead. About twenty years later a fatal fight took place in the lion house of the Zoological garden, Regent’s park, between a tiger and a tigress. The latter was ill-tempered, and, in sparring with her mate, drove her claw through his nostril, and so began the fray. The tiger threw her down and struck her several times with his paw, but without doing serious damage, then turned away, as if to discontinue the fight. This the tigress would not suffer, for she sprang at his flank aud fixed her teeth in his thigh. This was more than he could stand. One wild bound freed him; in a moment she was knocked over, and he gripped her by the neck, in which his huge canine teeth made fearful wounds. Sutton, the keeper, now managed to drive him off, and he used to say that when the tiger loosed his hold the blood spouted from his victim’s neck and splashed on the roof of the lofty den. ,