CHAPTER VII 



OUR BACKYARD CIRCUS 



ONE day at Paradise my Mem carpenter came 

 running to the door of my laboratory very 

 much excited and shouting in Swahili: "Elephants! 

 Elephants!" 



This wasn't exactly news, for the woods about us 

 were full of the big animals. But I grabbed my big 

 Akeley camera and tripod and followed the man to 

 the back of the shack, hoping as usual to get some- 

 thing out of the ordinary. There in the open scrub 

 about two himdred yards away were fifteen elephants, 

 several bulls, four or five cows, three half-grown 

 animals and two babies. They were all just feeding 

 along as comfortably as could be. 



Of course, I started to grind out film. When I 

 had turned down about two hundred feet what was 

 my surprise to see Osa duck up between me and the 

 elephants and shout: "What are you doing? Have 

 you gone crazy? " There she was, weeding her straw- 

 berries in the garden not a hundred yards from the 

 herd of wild elephants and blissfully ignorant of its 

 presence. Our calling back and forth, and the move- 

 ments of the boys about the camp finally caused the 



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