to watch the rehearsal. The lion seized Stark's left arm into its mouth and rolled over a number of times. (Roth had also been mauled earlier that day by a lion named Jeff. He suffered deep injuries to his arm before firing blanks into the animal's open jaws.) Stark was dragged unconscious from the cage and rushed to a hospital where she was treated for a mangled and broken arm. This was Stark's third mauling in as many years. In 1914, while in Detroit, Michigan, she was attacked by her leopards during a parade, and during the winter of 1915, she was mangled in Venice, California. She adopted a mangy, sickly tiger cub named Rajah and raised him to perform a famous wrestling act with her. She accomplished this by romping and playing with the cub at the beach and actually keeping him as a pet in her apartment. According to Stark's autobiography, "Rajah would run straight toward me. Up he went on his hind legs, his forefeet around my neck. We turned around once or twice, I threw him to the ground, and we rolled three or four times. I opened his mouth and put my face inside, then jumped to my feet". In 1922, she was asked to join the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus where she performed in Madison Square Garden with tigers and a black panther. By the end of that season, of the six wild animal acts featured with the circus, Stark's was clearly the greatest success. In 1923, she starred in the Ringling center ring, but two years later in 1925, the circus banned all wild animal acts. After a sojourn to Europe where she performed in a circus, she came back to the US in 1928 and began work with the John Robinson Show. In Bangor, Maine, she lost her footing in a muddy arena and was seriously mauled by her tigers. She suffered a wound that almost severed her leg, face lacerations, a hole in her shoulder, a torn deltoid, and a host of other injuries. She was rescued by fellow trainer Terrell Jacobs and returned to the ring in a matter of weeks, swathed in bandages and walking with a cane. She suffered numerous maulings and serious injuries over her nearly 60 years of working with tigers. At one point in her career, she would face 18 big cats