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Few hours later Director Heller and Banker Herbert Fleishhacker, zoo patron and Park Commission president, decided that Wally must die. Ten minutes before the scheduled execution next day a taxicab skidded up to the scene and out leaped a short, chunky man who introduced himself as Alexander Mooslin, "a lover of animals." Zoophilist Mooslin had gone to court, got a one-day restraining order against Wally's execution. "Plaintiff verily believes," he had petitioned, "that no animal of such dignity as this elephant should be destroyed or killed." Furthermore, argued Mr. Mooslin, Wally was a "movie elephant," hence too valuable a city property to be destroyed.
Reprieved, Wally swayed in chains while San Francisco newspapers stirred up a hot controversy over the question of his death. Said the president of the California Federation of Women's Clubs: "Animals are not gifted with our intelligence . . ." Said a sportsman: "He did not ask to leave his forest home in the Malay Peninsula . . ." Said Author Peter B. Kyne: "It was mating season with Wally." Next day the restraining order expired, the Judge refused to renew it, the District Court of Appeals denied Alexander Mooslin a review. Up to the bars of the elephant paddock stepped three crack-shot policemen armed with high-powered rifles. Wally was brought to his knees by chains. Firing in succession, the policemen put three steel-nosed bullets in his brain and the great hulk slumped, lay quivering in the dust.
In Manhattan, sure that Wally had been in must, Frank Buck cried: "It was a useless waste of life. He would soon have been normal again."