Battle of the Species

Man has reaped many rewards from his dominance of the animal kingdom. But animals are not his loyal followers; and he is still only slightly ahead. Last week the battle of the species was waged from Maine to Alaska.

P: In Mena, Ark., while the Campa Bros, circus trumpeted through its one-night stand, nine-year-old Maria Campa, granddaughter of one of the circus owners, was clawed and chewed to death by a young lion considered so tame he was tied to a stake outside his cage. Next day, as the Campa circus trundled along the rain-slicked road toward Mount Ida, two trucks overturned. Nine beasts scampered into Ouachita National Forest. A pursuing posse brought down one of two escaped leopards and recaptured a tame black bear and a rhesus monkey. The other leopard prowled all night before being tracked down by a small but heroic cur named Tony, whose owner, Roiston Fair, shot the leopard, but not before it had killed Tony. Still in the forest: a polar bear, a black bear, three monkeys.

P: Massachusetts State House in Boston was haunted by a fox for a whole week. Night watchmen would spot him skimming along the corridors and noted he kept fat on State House mice and leftovers from legislators' luncheons. Finally the fox was cornered in a basement tunnel hideout, doped with chloroform-impregnated cheesecloth on a long pole and later released in rolling New England woodland.

P: Susie, the 360-lb. giant panda which had been the idol of zoo-going New York moppets, died of causes unknown at the Bronx Zoo, Susie's home for ten of her eleven years, leaving only two of her species (at Chicago and St. Louis) in captivity. Susie will be hard to replace; giant pandas live in western Szechwan in Red China.

P: Near Martin City, Mont., Hunter Baker Hagstad dropped two other hunters with a single rifle shot. One died; the other was badly wounded. Another Montanan, out for elk, shot a white horse draped with a scarlet blanket and tied to a tree. Joseph A. Hoffman, 36, of Missoula, Mont., killed an elk, promptly keeled over, dead of a heart attack.

P: In Philadelphia, an eight-point buck wandered out of Fairmount Park into a bakery's loading yard. When four men tried to lasso it, the buck headed for an eight-foot fence, cleared it on the third try. With 16 police cars in hot pursuit, it darted 15 blocks to the Erie Avenue station of the Broad Street subway and slid down the stairs. Patrolman Thomas Gleason stopped it with a revolver shot as it was heading toward a turnstile for a northbound train.

P: South of Fairbanks, Alaska, a big bull moose chased from his harem of cow moose a smaller "student" bull moose, so called because he is expected to just stand around and watch. The student chose to fight. The two bulls locked antlers and were snared together for two weeks* before being spied from the air by a patrol plane. Rescuers arrived as encircling wolves began to close in, found the big moose dead and freed the student, which pranced off to his hard-won cows, a graduate.

P: When Roger Fossen and his wife moved 1,700 miles from Seattle to Morris, Minn, nine months ago, they had to leave their dog, Skippy, behind, giving him to a kindly neighbor boy. Last week a tattered, footsore and weary Skippy turned up in Morris, and took his accustomed place at the Fossen dinner table. Any doubt of Skippy's identity vanished when he passed up roast beef to gorge on lettuce and tomato salad with mayonnaise, long his favorite dish.

* Estimated from the emaciation of the live moose and the condition of the snow on the battleground.

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