Have you ever had a nightmare in which you were suddenly face to face with a wild animal-a tiger, maybe? Did you wake up and say "Thank God it was only a dream!"? Then you’ll never understand Mabel Stark. Because Mabel, in her own words "the only woman in the world crazy enough to fool around with tigers," has nightmares about not being able to stand face to face with the big cats, with only a whip between them.

Last month, for the third time in her hazardous career as an animal trainer, this slender woman with ice-blue eyes was savagely attacked by a tiger. Her right arm was so severally mangled, it took 175 stitches to save it. It’s healing now, but not fast enough for Mabel, who wants to get on with her business of training tigers. Way back at the turn of the century, in the days when most little girls dreamed of growing up to be wives & mothers, 10-year old Mabel Stark had a strange ambition. She wanted to be a wild animal trainer.

When Mabel was 11, her mother & father died within a month of each other. Mabel went to live with an aunt and uncle. She soon discovered they didn’t particularly relish having her in their house. While on an errand one day, she met the family doctor. Seeing how forlorn she looked, he asked, "Are you sick?" "No," she said. "I’m just lonesome. Nobody wants me around. I’m going to run away." The doctor began to talk to her about a nursing career. As soon as she was old enough, Mabel entered St. Mary’s Hospital in Louisville to start her training.

"On my afternoons off, I always went to the zoo while the other girls had dates. I loved to watch the lions and tigers pace up and down the cage." After graduation in 1911, she went to California for a rest and "to get the smell of the operating room out of my nose." Her first night in LA she met Al Sands, manager of Barnes’ Circus. "He asked me how I liked Los Angeles. I told him I hadn’t seen the city but the zoo was great. He was surprised to learn I liked animals. One of my friends spoke up and told Al my ambition was to become an animal trainer. He was interested and asked me if I’d like a job in the circus." "That night in my hotel room, I opened my suitcase and took out my nice white starched nurse’s uniform and cape I had worked so hard to earn. I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror. Then I took it off and wrapped it carefully. I knew I would never wear it again." The next morning she reported for work at the Barnes Circus quarters in Venice, Calif. But she suffered a disappointment.

She had expected to start her new career with the big cats; instead she was assigned to riding a horse. She complained bitterly to Sands, but he and her new circus friends just laughed at her good-humoredly. After she finished her first season and the circus folded for the winter, she stayed in Venice because she had no other place to go. "I didn’t have a home and no one to visit," explains Mabel. So she stuck around to watch the trainers put the animals through their paces.

Al G. Barnes asked her if she wanted to sign up for another season. Mabel said she would if he would give her an animal act. Inexperienced though she was, there was a kind of intense sincerity about this young girl who wanted to work with the cats and Barnes agreed. He turned her over to animal trainer Louis Roth, who was to teach her to handle the lions and tigers. For almost 40 years Mabel has trained and worked the treacherous jungle beasts in circuses, before the movie cameras and at animal farms. She has been mauled by tigers in all about 15 times, she thinks, three times severely.

Her first accident was in Bangor, Maine in 1928. She slipped and fell as she entered the arena to perform with 7 tigers. One rushed toward her, but she got to her feet and out of the cage before the Bengal reached her. When she went back in to chastise the unruly cat, another tiger crept up from behind and knocked her down with one sweep of his paw. Then both animals jumped her and clawed her about the shoulders, arms and breast.

A lion tamer and an attendant entered the cage and drove the beasts off. Her wound record read: 378 stitches, a muscle removed from her back, 2 from her thigh, left hip ripped, right leg stripped of flesh from knee to ankle and partial scalping. She found a doctor in Chicago who treated her scars with radium. After 2 months the scars were gone and she was back in the game she loved. In 1930, when Ringling bought out Al G. Barnes Circus she was offered a job as head trainer in the new organization. She grabbed it. She felt she was on top now.

5 years later, in Phoenix, Mabel was putting 18 tigers thru their paces. One of them pounced on her and bit through her left arm and shoulder as thousands watched in horror. With her arm hanging limp, she subdued the animal and finished the act. Nellie, the attacking tiger, had ripped open her back, abdomen and arm and crushed her elbow. Later, Mabel’s comment was "Nellie is so beautiful!"

In 1937 Mabel decided to "retire forever" from circus life but by April, 1938, she had already tired of "retirement" and went back into the cage with 21 lions and tigers. In the cage, she uses only a whip and a stick and sometimes a gun with blanks. The life of a working tiger is 15 to 16 years, their 20 being the equivalent of a human’s 60. Mabel works now with 7 tigers, all about 7 or 8 years old. She usually works half an hour at a time, 3 or 4 times a day, putting the tigers thru their routine. She has never given up on any animal she’s started to train.

You can take Mabel’s word for it, "There’s no such thing as a tamed wild animal, especially a member of the cat family. They all are as quick as lightning and will spring at any time without warning." Mabel has the simple theory about her success with animals: "They can be subdued, but never conquered except by love. Tigers are like people-no two alike. Each has his own peculiarities of temperament and disposition, which the trainer must study and understand. Some must be coaxed and spanked. Others can be flattered into obeying with a word of praise. Like all of us they want praise. That word of approval is worth a dozen beatings. Trainers who try to beat animals into submission always get into trouble. The animal hates a cruel master and bides its time." Sometimes things beyond a trainer’s control cause an animal to attack-a run of oppressive hot weather, or a hate for humans instilled by beatings by a former trainer.

Mabel understands when one of her tigers get out of hand. During WW II, she left her cats long enough to work at Lockheed Aircraft, doing her bit. Last year, she toured with Polack Circus, making personal appearances in NY City theatres and giving shows all over the country. She returned to Thousand Oaks, the scene of her latest accident in December. Mabel had worked with Pasha, the tigress who mangled her right arm, for 4 years. Pasha was considered "very tame" and no one knows why she suddenly attacked her trainer when Mabel reached in to take one of the cubs from the cage, something she had been doing almost every day. Her arm in a sling, Mabel showed up at the Jungle Compound’s March of Dimes benefit 2 weeks after her accident.

After addressing the crowd, she made her way through the throng "to see Pasha again." Before the awestruck audience she patted the huge tigress’ nose and leaned forward to kiss the furry head. She did this through the bars of the cage because her insurance company forbids her entering the enclosure with this particular tiger. "We’re not in this business for money," says Ed Trees, her husband of 25 years, who takes care of Mabel’s tigers. "It’s love-love for the excitement, the thrill of taking care of the sleek animals. It’s Mabel’s whole life."

The circus is in Ed’s blood too. He ran away from his Pittsburgh home to join the circus when he was 14. He and Mabel first met in 1918 at the Barnes winter quarters in Venice. He was the animal caretaker and she was on her way up as a trainer. Mabel and Ed don’t talk of retiring any more, although they have enough money to do so. "I’ve given the circus everything I had and the circus, in turn, has given me what I sought-success in my chosen line," Mabel says. "A tiger," says this tenacious little woman who won’t admit to more than 55 years, "can whip anything but a gun. And me."

BACK YARD is published twice monthly by Cherie Valentine, 1522 Clinton Blvd., Bloomington, IL 61701.  Comments by writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.  BACK YARD is a pro-circus, pro-animal publication which supports the use of animals which are legally held and properly cared for, in the American Circus.

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