Word: grutzius
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...Manzanares, business was so bad that 30 performers had quit, and all but 18 wagons had been sold to settle debts or buy food. In Manzanares, the manager himself ran out, to be followed soon afterward by the rest of the performers, who went home to Germany. Only Francis Grutzius, the 62-year-old midget, stayed on-to look after three elephants, two lions, seven bears, 14 dogs, a colony of monkeys, two porcupines and one eagle...
With his fox terrier Sweikof, Grutzius camped out in a circus wagon, sleeping on the floor (for all the furniture had been sold), scrounging food from local citizens who themselves were too poor to spare much. In the winter, the dwarf kept warm by getting drunk on harsh red wine, some of which he shared with Sweikof, and by burning dried grapevines in his stove...
...pets. In February, a ravenous elephant ate the roof of his pen, and died of wood splinters in his stomach. The other two elephants died from eating the straw coverings of wine bottles, which was the only food the people could find in sufficient bulk for such huge appetites. Grutzius buried the elephants, and by selling their tusks for ivory got enough to buy food for man and beast for a few more weeks. But by winter's end the last of the lions had eaten the carcass of the last of the horses, and the performing dogs...
Summer in La Mancha is as fiercely hot as winter is bitter cold. In July, when the temperature rose to 104°, two bears died. Grutzius buried the bears beside the ele phants. Eventually Madrid's Society for the Protection of Animals (a not very aggressive outfit in the land of bullfighting) belatedly arrived on the scene. All that was left of the once-proud circus Holzmuller was the midget, his dog, five emaciated bears, a scraggy monkey, three performing dogs and one eagle, all too weak...
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