Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Cole Bros. Circus 1935 #5

Posted by Buckles at 3/14/2006 06:10:00 AM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Richard Reynolds says - -

The date on this photo is wrong. There was no hippo on the Cole show its first season in 1935. They did, however, get one the next season, 1936 - -Pinky. Gordon Potter visited the Cole show at South Bend, IN on 5 May 1936 and was there when Pinky was delivered to the circus. He was told by the animal men that she had come from Brookfield Zoo. Confusingly, a squib in Billboard (9 May 36) reported that Cole purchased hippo Chunky from Brookfield.

There is no doubt that Pinky was born on the Hagenbeck Wallace circus (1929) and had been stationed at its Peru, IN winter quarters in the early 1930s. I figured that H-W (by then under RBBB control) sold the animal to Brookfield Zoo around 1934. However, the zoo’s animal records are convincing that there was never any hippo named Pinky at the zoo. There was one named Chunky and it went in trade to animal dealer Ruhe instead of Cole Bros.

Mystery solved - - Several years ago I was pouring through RBBB records at CWM in Baraboo, and found an entry for 1936 stating that they sold Pinky directly to Cole. Obviously, as a bitter competitor, Cole just did not want to let it out that they had gotten the hippo from RBBB. So they concocted the Brookfield zoo story. Transportation-wise it made sense to just run the hippo up the road from the RBBB’s Peru quarters to South Bend. This picture would have taken been taken after 1925 - - - say 1936 or 1937.

As further information, Cole traded Pinky to National Zoo, Washington in 1939 in return for a pygmy hippo. Alas the pygmy died in the horrible fire at Cole’s winter quarters at Rochester, IN early 1940. Pinky was at NZP until she was retired to Zoorama, New Market, VA in 1959. She died there in 1960.

16 March, 2006 18:34
Anonymous said...

I think it is fantastic how someone can trace an animal from birth to death, circus to zoos, back and forth. If we did not love our animals we would not take such maticulas[?] care of their records. Thank you Richard for being such a careing kind of guy.

16 March, 2006 20:25

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