Wild Kindred — Key Ideas to Explore

Lhoks was a handsome animal, and the boys and girls who gathered in crowds around his cage gazed at him with round eyes of admiring awe. He happened to be a very large specimen of his kind, measuring about eleven feet in length. His coat was reddish-brown, now grown somewhat shabby, owing to his long confinement in the narrow cage. A small patch of white fur marked either side of his muzzle. His snarling lips showed jet black, also the tip of his tail, which he lashed angrily. His eyes, which Lhoks half closed when angry or cross, were of gleaming greenish yellow, showing golden lights. Over his cage door one might read: "Panther, or American Lion."

It happened three years before, that Lhoks and two other small panther cubs had been left alone by the old panthers, who went off to hunt; feeling lonely, but full of mischief and play, they came out of their safe den, to frolic upon a wide flat ledge. There upon the rock they all played together happily, rolling over each other and cuffing with their clumsy kitten-like paws. And there the hunter came across them, and so young and unafraid were the small panthers that they allowed the man to carry them off. When the old panthers returned to the den it was quite empty; their babies were gone. For days and days they followed vainly the long trail of the robber, with red, revengeful eyes, but they never caught up with him.

Two of the cubs died in captivity, but Lhoks, stronger and more lusty than the others, lived. For three years he had travelled with the menagerie, but he hated the life, and with all the longing in his heart he would dream, in his wild way, of the dark, sweet scented woods, the safe retreats where he might hide in secret, silent places of his forest. Most of all did he hate the blare of the loud music, which made him howl, and deeply too did he resent the staring eyes of the curious crowds. Sullenly he would glower back at them. Often he felt weak and sick in the close confining quarters of his hated cage; so much so, that he would stretch out his tawny body miserably upon the floor and lie there for hours. But alas for poor Lhoks during show hours, should he chance to appear stupid and sleepy and ill when the people came to stare at him! Then someone was sure to reach into his cage with a long red pole, to the end of which was attached a cruel, sharp spike, and then they would poke and prod the poor animal until he got upon his feet. Just one sharp prod of the spike was usually enough to make Lhoks jump up and snarl and begin once more his endless pacing back and forth, from end to end of his prison.

Then the delighted crowd would shiver and exclaim at his dreadful fierceness, and often poke him playfully with canes or umbrellas, just to make him yell loudly. The howls of Lhoks the panther were terrifying, and when he screamed out it usually stirred up all the other animals of the menagerie.

If Lhoks hated the crowds, he soon learned to dread most of all the long, overland journeys by rail. Then the cages would all be loaded upon goods trucks, and for days they would rumble and jolt and sway dizzily in their close, ill-smelling quarters; if water was not handy, sometimes the attendants neglected them, and forgot that the poor caged things were very thirsty. Often at the end of a trip they arrived faint, car-sick, and so exhausted they were barely able to stagger to their cramped legs.