| Elephants are the
largest and heaviest land creatures and they are possessed of a
degree of dignity and intelligence unequalled by any other animal.
Gosta Kruse, one of the world's greatest trainers, has worked with
them for twenty years, and in this book he tells of his experiences
and of the friendship that can exist between man and elephant.
Kruse was still a young boy when he
began to train elephants, and he quickly found that the training was
by no means one-sided. It soon became clear to him that elephants
are well able to think for themselves and to give the trainer a few
mischievous lessons of their own. However, at the age of seventeen
he felt sufficiently sure of himself and his two four-ton elephants
to set off on a tour with the Swedish Zoo Circus, first in
Scandinavia and then across Europe. This was soon after the war,
when problems of food and transport for the men, let alone the
elephants, were almost insuperable. But Kruse managed to keep the
act going, and met with tremendous success wherever he went.
For the last ten years Kruse has
presented his elephants in the ring of Bertram Mills' Circus. He
catches well the atmosphere of the tenting life, its gaiety and
colour, its sense of freedom when the sky is blue and the circus is
on the move. But most of all he conveys the spirit of the unique
affinity which links him to his fascinating, temperamental, beloved
animals.
Condition: Photographic plates throughout. Original dust jacket very
good, with some general wear and minor tears at the top, and a
little rubbing to edges, not price-clipped. Hard-back binding, very
good. Contents clean and tight. A very good tight copy. Click
photograph above for close up of book that is for sale.
|
