‘Yes; I have had many narrow escapes,’ he replied. ‘In Suez a full-grown giraffe ran away with me. The rope I held him by got entangled round my arm, and I could not get free. I was dragged along the streets and fearfully banged about. When I at length got loose I was so exhausted I was obliged to lie down for a quarter of an hour without moving. Another time a freshly imported troop of elephants ran away in Vienna. I was upon one of them myself, the others hugging close to it. I lost my elephant-guiding hook, but I stopped him by biting his ear with my teeth, when all the others, which were closely bunched round him, stopped with him. I got the six elephants, as I thought, safely tethered by a rope in the railway-car; but the rope broke, and there was I with six loose elephants boxed up in a closed car. When I got out I was uninjured. Another time a big African elephant got frightened at the railway-station at Hamburg and ran away with me, but I held fast to his ears, and finally brought him back to his stable. Another time a big elephant got hold of me, lifted me up, and smashed me down on a barrier which was before him. I got several bruises, but no bones were broken. Again, I was chased by a male ‘must’ elephant, which had gone mad. I came well out of that also, and finally tethered him unaided. Once again I was packing animals away in a large packing-case, and was standing with my back to a six-feet tusker elephant. This elephant had been badly treated, but this I was unaware of. All at once the elephant made a rush at me, and literally pinned me to the packing-case. One tusk grazed me on my right side, the other grazed my left. My clothes were cut, and the skin on both my sides was grazed. Finally, I fell down, and escaped in a miraculous manner. But I now come to what I consider the greatest escape of all. I was superintending the lowering of a large alligator into a pit, when, with a sweep of its tail, it knocked me right into the middle of a dozen large alligators and some polar bears. I jumped out in a second, or I should most assuredly have been torn to pieces. I could tell you many other events in my life, which you would scarcely credit; but come, I must show you round the menagerie.’ What a wonderful place that menagerie is, to be sure! There are no less than three training cages, where lions, elephants, tigers, dogs, and bears are all taught to perform together most astonishing tricks. The training of these animals goes on all day. ‘Just step on one side a minute,’ calmly says Carl Hagenbeck.