If closely pursued, a giraffe can escape through a jungle of thorn bushes where men and horses cannot follow, and come through without a scratch. His skin looks to be thin and tender, but it is really so tough and so thick in places that soft lead bullets often flatten out on it. If cornered, the giraffe kicks like a mule. Dr. Livingston, the African explorer, says a giraffe's kick is as bad as a clap from the sail of a Dutch wind-mill. The animal fights with his head, too. Having no horns, tusks, or antlers, he does not lower his head and charge, like a bull elephant or buck deer. He gives a long, swinging blow sideways, using his head and neck as a sort of hammer, and striking with his powerful lower jaw and teeth.

As a rule the giraffe keeps out of trouble by running away from it. In running he has three gaits. He rocks like a camel with his neck stretched out; he trots like a horse with his head held high, and he gallops or bounds like the antelope, but more clumsily, his long neck plunging up and down with every bound. Because of his long stride he can get over the ground as fast as a horse, but he tires sooner.

Most giraffes in menageries and zoos are caught young. A mother has only one baby at a time, an ungainly spotted calf that is almost as helpless as a baby camel. When the herd is alarmed and starts to run a baby may be left behind and be captured. Full grown giraffes are sometimes caught with the cow-boy's lariat, but there are few rough riders who can throw a lariat loop twenty feet high and drop it over a giraffe's head. Great care must be taken to give the plunging, frightened animal plenty of rope, or he may give a sudden jerk and break his long neck.

In his new book on hunting in Africa, that all of you should read some day, Mr. Roosevelt says the giraffe doesn't always run when men come near. He got very close to a cow giraffe that had her head in a tree taking a nap. So it seems, the giraffe, like the elephant, sometimes leans up against a tree to sleep. The animal looked at him sleepily a moment and closed her eyes again. As he came nearer she kicked at him. When the rest of the party came up and threw sticks and clods at her, she showed her teeth in an ugly snarl, like a cross dog. Finally she kicked out at them and then trotted away.

Of all the large animals in a menagerie or zoo, the giraffe worries his captors and keepers most. His neck is so long it is always in danger of being broken. He has to have an open sky-light in the roof of his cage to put his head and neck through. Sometimes, in turning around in his small cage, the neck is twisted or a bone snapped. In travelling on a railway, the roof window has to be kept shut, or the first low bridge would catch the head of the animal. He is not ill-tempered, as a rule, but having his eighteen feet of height jammed under a ten-foot roof makes him peevish. Sometimes he refuses to eat, and sometimes he turns vicious and attacks his keeper with his hammer of a head. So, although he looks so gentle, with his mild and beautiful eyes of a deer, you should never go very near a giraffe's cage.

But you should never miss a chance to see one of these strange and interesting animals. Like the bison, or what we call the American buffalo, the grizzly bear, the African elephant, the Bengal tiger, the kangaroo, and many other wild animals, the giraffe has been hunted so long that he is rapidly disappearing. A hundred years from now the children may be able to see only stuffed giraffes in museums of natural history. They will think how lucky the children of our day were to see these queer beasts alive. See Giraffe, page 768.