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Someday,
perhaps, a work crew laying cable or pipe will unearth a large set of bones near
a busy Wichita
Falls intersection.
They may think they have found the remains of
some prehistoric creature, but they would be wrong. Should a paleontologist be
consulted, the expert would determine that the bones, while old, did not come
from a wooly mammoth, but its evolutionary descendant, the elephant.
How
an elephant came to be buried in Wichita
Falls is a story of incredible cruelty – at least by modern standards – that
from this distance smells like a publicity stunt. Whatever the motivations involved,
a bizarre set of circumstances converged in this Northwest Texas city in 1899.
It started when a circus hit town. The owner of the show let it be known that
the company had a killer elephant under sentence of death.
The animal had
been spared after killing one man some years before, but when the pachyderm killed
a second, the circus proprietor sentenced it to death. At least that was his story.
Maybe the animal was just getting old and the circus boss figured the publicity
attendant to executing a “killer” elephant would be worth a whole lot more than
the hay it took to keep the animal swinging its trunk.
Plastering the town
with handbills, the owner called on the good people of Wichita
Falls to lend a hand in the execution.
On the date set, the elephant
was walked from the Big Top to a spot near where Brook now crosses Kell Boulevard
and staked out with leg chains. As one newspaper later reported, “Everybody in
Wichita Falls who had a shooting iron repaired to the scene. There were folks
with shotguns, revolvers of various kinds and rifles.”
Unfortunately,
no one had the kind of firepower it takes to drop an elephant. The beast took
on more lead than 20 coats of old paint and seemed not much worse for the wear.
The only noticeable affect, totally understandable, was a considerable annoyance
at those doing the shooting. The elephant lunged at its chains, but fortunately
for the crowd, the iron held.
Shotgun pellets bounced harmlessly off its
thick hide as the beast roared in fear and rage.
The Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals not yet having a toehold in Wichita
Falls, the circus gang came up with another idea. A railroad track being nearby,
with the ready cooperation of the local station master, two switch engines were
employed to stretch out a heavy chain fastened around the big animal’s neck.
The killer elephant, if indeed it was, finally died of strangulation.
Safe
at last from the possible rampage of a rogue elephant, the people of this Northwest
Texas community faced another not-so-little problem: How to dispose of a dead
elephant.
As city officials pondered the situation, someone noticed the
town scavenger in the crowd and had an idea. If he would bury the elephant, he
could have the hide.
The man, thinking the near bullet-proof skin would
make a fine roof for his house at Seventh and Austin streets, agreed to what literally
was quite a large undertaking. With help from his family, he skinned the elephant,
dug a hole sufficient to contain the body, and somehow got the carcass in it.
For
a time, the junk dealer had the distinction of having the only elephant skin roof
in Wichita
Falls, the state of Texas and perhaps anywhere
in the nation.
But fame, and utility, proved fleeting. After the first
good rain, the elephant roof shrank like so much green rawhide. By that time,
of course, the circus had long since pulled its tent stakes and moved on to the
next town.
© Mike
Cox - "Texas Tales"
2003 column
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