Trainer Attacked By Eight Polar Bears

Professor John Dudak, the famous animal trainer, said recently in an interview that his most perilous fight with wild beasts took place in a cage of polar bears. Here is Professor Dudak's story of the encounter:

"I have been with Hagenbeck for many years and have been more or less associated with wild beasts all my life. I like the profession of animal trainer very much. I handle even polar bears each evening, and I must say that they are the hardest animals to train of any that I have ever attempted to subdue.

"I am scratched and clawed all over, but I bear no animosity to my pets, because I know it is their nature to be wild.

"I receive a scratch or two every night from Muffie, my wrestling bear. This same bear almost killed my assistant, William Carroll, in Indianapolis.

"Polar bears are very stupid, and what little I have taught them has taken six years of patient work.

"Originally I had sixteen bears, but seven of them died and I had to kill two to save my own life.

"Two years ago during a rehearsal in New Orleans the bears made a combined attack on me. They rushed at me from all quarters and got me in a corner, where I had to fight for my life.

"I grabbed a short pitchfork and began to stab them with it as hard as I could. They kept up the fight and one of them ripped my shirt and trousers open as though they had been cut with a knife.

"The next instant he would have me down, but I drew my revolver and shot him dead. Then my assistants came running up and drove the bears back with redhot irons."