(Bill Gurstelle is guest blogging here on Boing Boing. He is the author of several books including Backyard Ballistics, and the recently published Absinthe and Flamethrowers. Twitter: @wmgurst)
Writing a book is a long and difficult process. Sometimes, a part of the book that the author really likes is excised by the editor. Well, thanks to Mark and the other Boingboing’ers I get to share it here.
The first draft of Absinthe and Flamethrowers contained a historical sidebar on the ancient practice of human vs animal combat and I don’t mean throwing Christians to the lions. Rather, I mean a one-on-one match up between an gunless human and an equivalently sized animal. Turns out this practice, (please note that I also think it’s bizarre, and in the Commodus case below, disgusting, and I’m not advocating it) is pretty well known throughout history.
Commodus, the degenerate Roman emperor (so excellently portrayed by Jaoquin Phoenix in Gladiator) would often parade around the Roman Coliseum dispatching animals with a sword or spear. While he certainly wasn’t unarmed, he was in close contact.
The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions; a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they ran raging around the Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros, could defend them from his stroke. Ethiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in the amphitheatre, which had been seen only in the representations of art, or perhaps of fancy.
– The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Chapter 4
Fairs and amusement parks at the turn of the Twentieth Century were colorful, vibrant, and boisterous places. They offered an antidote to the strict moral codes of the period and offered exotic products and activities which curious visitors found irresistible: foot long hot dogs and salt water taffy, ferris wheels and roller coasters, and . . . kangaroo boxing.
In the year 1900, the Boardwalk in Atlantic City was well known for its boxing kangaroo (whose name is sadly forgotten in the sands of time.) But by all accounts, it was a hell of a good boxer and was said by more than one spectator that it could give John L. Sullivan himself a run for his money. This was the heyday of man versus kangaroo pugilism.
More recently, there are several mid-20th century diary and newspaper accounts of monkey wrestling matches at county fairs. One man wrote that he went to town one day and came across a carnival where for five dollars a person could enter a cage containing an orangutan. If the person could stay in the cage with the ape for five minutes, they got paid $100. But nobody was able to do it.
“After several hours of strategy sessions and drinking beer, I devised a plan and launched off to encounter the orangutan.
“The monkey looked docile enough, 110 pounds, long skinny arms, just sitting there in the middle of this iron cage. I approached the monkey from the backside and grabbed it in a half nelson. To my surprise and pleasure, she offered no resistance. Then I made the mistake of lifting the orangutan off the ground. I had a big smile on my face. This lasted for about fifteen seconds, and then I noticed that this long, skinny arm had reached up and grabbed the iron bar over my head.
“I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, until a few seconds later, I felt my feet leave the ground. I figured out the orangutan, who weighed 110 pounds (and I weighed about 230 at the time) had just done a one-arm pull up with something like three times her body weight.
“I realized I was in deep and serious trouble, and the grin on my face turned to stark terror. I was no longer squeezing the ape, but actually holding on her back for fear of my life. The orangutan, while she held us in mid air with one arm, reached around with this other long skinny arm and grabbed me from the back of my neck and slung me the length of the cage, through the door which I immediately took exit from the cage.”
Much more on this subject at Notes From the Technology Underground