Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived

by Ralph Helfer

“I want him with me.”

  “To do what?”

  “To help work Modoc.”

  “Ha! She’ll smash him! Why, even I can’t see him most of the time.”

  “Curpo may be small but he is excellent with elephants. He was my assistant in Germany. He’s great with Mo and she cares for him very much.”

  “Moooooo! Cares for him very much!! How can she…ah! The answer is no!”

  Mr. North was on his way out the door when Bram thought of a possible solution. He called after Mr. North, “What if I put him in the act! The public would love to see a giant elephant and the World’s Smallest Man doing an act together.”

  Mr. North stopped. Bram knew anything that could make him more money was of interest to him.

  “Hmm,” said Mr. North.

  Curpo was at work the next day, strutting around as if he were five feet tall.

  It was no surprise when Bram and Gertie announced their marriage. Everybody at the circus was so excited for them, especially their friends at the sideshow. But their friends hadn’t known until now that the ceremony was going to be held in the big top, center ring, during a performance! It would be this coming Sunday, during the matinee, at the beginning of the second half of the show, just after intermission.

  The crowds flocked to see the wedding. As the audience took their seats, a hush fell over the big top. The ceremony began. The trumpets blared. The announcer intoned.

  “Ladies and gentleman, children from around the world, the North Circus, under the personal auspices of Mr. North, is proud to have your presence at the marriage of Modoc’s world-famous elephant trainer, Bram Gunter, to the lovely lady, Gertie Baron.”

  The calliope played a circus rendition of the wedding march. Colored spotlights searched the curtain. From the farthest end of the big top the curtain parted.

  Six beautiful ladies, the acrobats who twirled on the ropes high in the air, entered, all dressed in shimmering silver gowns. Three on a side, they walked in timed steps, followed by the equestrian performers. The horses were slick and high-stepping, carrying the ladies they performed with.

  Next came the aerial trapeze performers, each with a swirling, glittering purple cape. On and on they came. The clowns, jugglers, high-wire troupe, strutting their awesome elegance. The calliope changed tunes according to the performers’ appearance.

  So long was the procession that it wasn’t until the girls in the silver gowns reached the other side of the tent that the elephants appeared. The smaller ones were first, gamboling, squeaking their little voices. Then the bigger elephants, two by two, gradually increasing in size. Forty-two in all, tons and tons of pachyderm, all dressed in their fancy headpieces, lumbered into the arena. Each had a pretty girl up top, a trainer at the side. When the entire big top was completely full of performers and animals, all came to a stop.

  Finally the moment everybody was waiting for. A roll of the drums, a series of horns heralding a special happening, a moment’s hesitation at the curtain. In one sweeping gesture, the curtains parted. Standing there in all her magnificence was Modoc. Trunk raised, she stood as a statue made by the finest sculptor of all! Riding up top were Bram and Gertie. The calliope played a circus rendition of “Here Comes the Bride.” Red, white, and blue spotlights danced from one place to another.

  Gertie was sitting in a beautiful sequined red and gold howdah. She looked radiant, her golden hair flowing soft and fine. Sprinkles of Stardust shimmered in her hair. She wore a pure white silk dress that accentuated her lovely form, its train overflowing down Modoc’s back.

  Bram stood behind her. He was dressed in a white velvet costume, tight-fitting, elegant. The front of the shirt was laden with hundreds of tiny diamond studs cascading down the sides of his legs.

  Modoc in her tux and bow tie, trunk up, nails painted, tusks golden, skin shining, trumpeted their arrival. The audience stood and applauded as they passed.

  As they reached the center ring, Modoc positioned herself alongside a glass staircase. Silver and gold spirals of woven cotton cascaded down its sides. Bram helped Gertie step to the waiting staircase, and then together they descended to the waiting minister and their dear friends.

  And so on a warm Sunday afternoon, amid thousands of admirers and friends, Bram married Gertie. Hundreds of white, pink, and blue pigeons were released, flying in swooping circles around the big top. Their kiss sealed a love born years before that now could take its first breath to live…and to flourish.

  Bram and Gertie had known for some time where they would go on their honeymoon. Both felt a calling, a need to return to a time and place where love had a different meaning, where life didn’t sit so close to the edge. They yearned to be together in Germany, in the Black Forest, at Cryer Lake; to see the old farm, the barn where so much of their lives had been lived.

  Bram knew how difficult it would be. His father and now mother were both gone. Probably many of his friends, also. Both Gertie’s parents, although quite old, still lived in the same house. She felt the need to gently say goodbye, as she knew she would never return.

  But their needs were of a more personal, deeper nature. The ends of the silver thread that bound them together needed to be tied in a square knot, never to come loose again. The thread was not meant to be tested for strength; it was too delicate for that. But rather the energy that ran through it needed to be circled, to be infinite, and only by going back could they feel content.

  They had so little time. The trip would need to be short. They told no one of their arrival. It would have taken too much time searching for them, probably missing most, causing hurt feelings—no, they would go incognito. If they met someone, fine, if not, all right.

  The plane ride was their first. Traveling across the world at such high speeds was something they had never thought of doing. Their arrival in Frankfurt, the hiring of a car, the ride to the farmhouse were done in silent anxiety.

  The day was cool, a cloud cover blanketed the countryside. Bram had refused to sell the house after his mother’s death. He could see the roof of the old house from miles away. Later they stood at the barn door. All around them were the memories they knew would be there. Inside, the old stove, a few moldy bales of hay, the tack room full of rusty nails, broken hammers, and a cracked light bulb.

  He stood where Modoc had been born. The place felt musty, cold. The dampness made Gertie shiver. The house was empty save for a few pieces of furniture too old and worn to take.

  They walked the land, occasionally picking up a piece of something or other. The following day was spent at Gertie’s parents’ house, sitting on the porch, slowly talking, sipping tea, eating biscuits. They visited Gertie’s room where he, in the cold of the night, had said his goodbye. “I’ll never forget you, Gertie. I love you.”

  Gertie’s goodbye to her parents was heartfelt by all. “I’ll see you in heaven,” she was really saying.

  The third day was spent at the graveyard. Bram opened the rusty gate. Gertie saw him stagger a bit, not much, just a little, but it caused her concern. He put some flowers they had picked on the graves. Somewhere a calliope was playing.

  Bram looked up to the hill where Modoc had carried him and Gertie to the funeral. His mind’s eye could still see them there, looking down.

  The last day was spent at Cryer Lake. Bram had picked field flowers for Gertie. They lay under their tree, the tree that grows from the top down. The river was still, quiet. A trout jumping was a major happening in the stillness.

  The ravens dove low, looking, calling to the strangers as though they recognized them. From the small hill that led to the lake, one could hear the sobbing of a man, in grief. Each tear carried the memory of yesteryear, of happy and sad moments, of having to say goodbye.

  The knot was tied.

  35

  MO DIDN’T FEEL WELL. Her last performance had been a bit sluggish. Some of the other elephants were acting the same way. A veterinarian was called out, but after a quick once-over couldn’t find anything wron
g. The next morning, four elephants were down. Five or six others weren’t eating and had bad cases of diarrhea. Again the vet was called. Bram found out he was a dog and cat vet and knew nothing about elephants.

  Without asking Mr. North, Bram called the local zoo and arranged for its veterinarian to come. The doctor spent a couple of hours taking blood and urine samples, checking eyes, ears, trunks, reflexes, temperatures, and everything else. Finally he met with the head trainer at the far end of the menagerie tent. Bram, Gertie, and Curpo joined some of the elephant trainers to hear what the doctor had to say.

  “I’m sorry, but it appears as though they’ve all been poisoned,” he reported.

  “What?” they said in unison.

  “What’s the prognosis?” asked the head trainer.

  The doctor shook his head. “I won’t lie to you. I think we’ll be lucky to save half of them.”

  “No!”

  “No way!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Gertie gripped Bram’s arm tightly. He hadn’t said a word. She asked the vet, “Are you sure?”

  “How could they have access to poison?” The head trainer couldn’t believe his ears.

  “It could’ve been bad food,” suggested Curpo.

  “No, this is too concentrated,” the vet said. “The only way would have been by injection, or a strong dosage put in their food.”

  The head trainer said slowly, thinking while he spoke, “If they were injected, the person would have to know their weight, give or take a few hundred pounds, plus have access to poison.”

  “And have a way for it to be injected, like hypodermic needles. Who could do that?” someone asked.

  The vet rolled down his sleeves and moved to the washbasin, where he scrubbed his hands. He began packing the vials of specimens into his case. “We’ll know more when we isolate the poison at the lab, if we can, but my professional opinion is that since they all seem to be experiencing the problem equally, I suspect whoever did this put the poison in their food.”

  “Who in the world would poison elephants?” asked a trainer.

  “Beats me. Who’s capable?” said another.

  “Could be a psychopath, someone who hates elephants,” suggested the vet.

  “Perhaps someone who wants to hurt the circus in some way, someone who recently lost his job,” the head trainer said.

  “What do you mean?” Bram finally spoke up. He inched his way toward the head trainer.

  “Well, about two weeks ago, I fired a roustabout who was into the hooch…er…wine. Came in one night and began beating on the elephants.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Bram asked.

  “I stopped him,” the head trainer replied. “And had him fired. That’s all I had to do.”

  “Two weeks ago?” Bram asked. “We were in Miami then. You think he could have followed us—just to do this?”

  “Look, Bram, lots of men talk through their booze. I didn’t see him around, so I thought he’d left.”

  “I’ll have Mr. North call in the police to check him out.” Bram turned to the vet, “Meanwhile, what can we do?”

  “Depending how the poisoning has affected each elephant, the treatments will be different. I’ll need all the help I can get. It’ll be time-consuming, there are so many elephants. Once we figure out an antidote of some kind, and the dosage, they will need a round-the-clock vigil.”

  Bram and Gertie helped the vet load his car with his supplies.

  Mr. North was in a state of panic. “Put a twenty-four-hour guard duty on the elephants, in fact, on the whole damn circus!” He ordered that a notice be put up at the main gate:

  ELEPHANT ACT CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS

  The notice went out to the papers, radio, magazines, even billboards. All carried the message. Hundreds of concerned people called in asking if they could be of any help. An emergency tent was erected at the back lot, thick layers of sawdust were laid, and it was there the sick elephants were brought.

  The vet had taken a leave from the zoo and was now staying on full-time.

  “How come some aren’t sick?” a circus employee asked the vet.

  “Probably our killer never had the chance to feed the poison to them all—or perhaps he just ran out of it.”

  On the fifth day, the vet came running up to Bram.

  “Bram, Mo’s down!”

  “Yes, well, I know she has been depressed but she’s been eating a bit and—”

  “No,” the vet said, shaking his head, “I mean down, on the ground. She’s taken a turn for the worse.”

  Mo was flat out, her breathing labored, and yellow slime dripped from her tongue. Bram knelt by her side and stroked her.

  “We pumped her stomach, put her on saline, and are building up her system as best we can, but she’s not responding,” the vet informed him.

  “She didn’t seem this bad yesterday. What happened?” “Bram, poison can take its time to permeate into the system. Remember what I said about the difference in elephants? Some just handle it better. Others, well, succumb.”

  “There must be something else that you can do!”

  “There’s not. I’ve given her every known counteracting drug I can think of. We’ve called in specialists from around the country. It’s a waiting game right now.” He put his hand on Bram’s shoulder. “There’s nothing more we can do. I’m so sorry.”

  Mo’s insides were burning. The poison was taking its toll. She hadn’t eaten in days. Her water intake was minuscule. Bram tried to reach her in a holistic way, using the methods taught him at the Elephantarium.

  “How many are down now?” he asked the vet.

  “Last count, eleven. This psycho was thorough.”

  “Yeah.”

  Additional tents were erected to handle all the elephants. Bram and Curpo, along with others, stayed the nights in the tent. Bram hadn’t slept since the day it happened. Unshaven, eyes red, hair askew, he was visibly shaking from the thought of Modoc dying. He couldn’t help thinking of the elephants that had died on the mountain and how all this reminded him of it. Within five days, sixteen elephants had died. Their carcasses were loaded into closed vans and hauled to a special dump area that the city had approved. There they were buried and covered with the dirt and garbage from the nearby dump.

  The veterinarian was a dedicated man. He couldn’t have done more. He made calls to research centers around the country, had special equipment brought in to analyze the poison firsthand. He was given Bram’s first trailer to catnap when the exhaustion was too much.

  On the morning of the seventh day, as he took the cup of coffee Gertie gave him with a silent thank you, he told the trainers and the others, “The poison is strong, but since it’s slow acting, it has given us the opportunity to try various drugs. It’s obvious to everyone here that none has worked. Now the poison is reaching its full potential. Few of the elephants, if any, will be able to ward off the total impact.”

  He turned to Bram, who was standing near Modoc, watching her labored breathing with grave concern.

  “Bram, body liquids are filling Mo’s peritoneal cavity. We haven’t been able to drain it off.” He pulled him aside, and out of the earshot of Gertie and Curpo and the others, said quietly, “I think it’s time that you begin to accept…she’s dying, Bram.”

  But he wouldn’t acknowledge it. “No! No! Look, maybe if we call…someone…anyone.” He was becoming irrational.

  “Bram, we’ve tried everything.”

  He lay with her all night, talking, holding, touching. Her eye watched his every move. If he got up and walked around, her eye followed him. When he lay close, her eye watched his. She was talking to him in her way. She showed little pain except when her stomach constricted, tearing and retching, burning, eating itself up!

  A low light shone behind him and Bram turned to see the vet standing there, holding a lantern. There was a long moment of silence between the two. Finally he spoke up, the words coming slowly, “How
long, Doc?”

  The vet knelt down and patted Mo tenderly on the trunk. “She’ll be gone by morning.”

  The night was the longest of Bram’s life. What are the things that keep one from dying? Bram’s mind raced through all he knew. There must be something they had overlooked. Drugs, rest, faith, belief, medicine, care, doctors, hospitals. He knew all had been tried. If the mind can allow sickness, then it can allow wellness.

  In the very early hours of the morning Bram heard a commotion at the far end of the tent. He hurried over as one of the circus workers was telling the others.

  “They caught the guy! I just heard North on the phone. Boy, was he blowin’ off steam at being disturbed so damn late, but you should’ve heard him telling the police what they should do with the guy! He’s going down to police headquarters personally right noW to press charges. The head trainer’s going, too. Turns out this guy is an ex-professor of…wait, how’d they say it? Entomology.”

  “What’s that?” asked someone.

  The veterinarian explained, “It’s the study of bugs. Insects.”

  Bram spoke up, “Insects? Maybe he used something like bug poison on them.” He turned to the vet hopefully. “What do you think?”

  “Could be, I don’t know. We were sure it was a poison like curare, or nicotine, maybe botulism, but insect poison never crossed our minds.”

  Someone came in, out of breath. “Hey, Doc, there’s a call for you in the office. It’s the police doctor.”

  A minute later the vet was on the phone, Bram next to him, almost pressing too close for him to hear.

  “Hello,” the vet said. “Yes, this is he.”

  Silence as the man nodded. Bram was impatient and could hardly wait for him to finish. Gertie somehow appeared in the hallway, waiting for word. Finally the call was terminated and the vet turned to him.

  “They’ve broken down the elements of the poison. The vaccine’s been located at an Entomological Research Center about an hour by air from here. They’re flying down the vaccine.”

  “When?” asked Gertie.