Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1916)

The Centaur Studio 221 wire fences twenty feet in height, that run from the center like the spokes of a wheel. The ends are also closed in by fences, and at the apex of each section, which is in the form of a triangle, there is a concrete platform from which a earner can be focused on any section. At the edge of this platform a moat six feet wide divides it from the arena itself which serves two purposes ; one is that it keeps the animals from reaching the platform, and the other is that a player can escape the attack of enraged beasts by jumping into it. The different sections are divided even in the moat by trapdoors under water that swing back or forward from the top, so that a pursued player can jump into the water and come up in the next section, wet, but safe. "Has it ever been necessary for any one to take to the moat?" I asked Miss Harris, in interest. A young, handsome, curly-headed man was approaching us and Miss Harris smiled. "Ask Crane Wilbur," she said, and introduced me to the idol of girls the country over. I asked him. "When I am going to work with the Bostock collection of noble animals I certainly want that moat handy," he replied, with a grin. "I was strolling around in this 'wild jungle' one day, when Captain Bonavita suddenly shouted a command to me to jump. He never raises his voice unless there is a reason, and you can believe me when I say that I jumped! I looked behind just long enough to see three sinuous leopards crawling toward me from behind the rocks. When I had a real good chance to look at them again I was dripping from head to foot, but safe over in the section across the way. One of the leopards was angrily screaming because it had lost its balance and fallen into the moat, hitting the netting of the camera man's cage. They had to bring Captain Jack Bonavita and Leo, foremost of the Centaur's animal actors.