Editing Delia Akeley (section)

==With Carl E. Akeley==
In Milwaukee she met [[taxidermist]], [[artist]] and [[inventor]] [[Carl E. Akeley]], who was employed at the [[Milwaukee Public Museum]]. Akeley biographers Penelope Bodry-Sanders and Jay Kirk suggest that Delia and Akeley had an affair;<ref>{{cite book|last1=Bodry-Sanders|first1=Penelope|title=African Obsession: The Life and Legacy of Carl Akeley|date=1998|publisher=Batax}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Kirk|first1=Jay|title=Kingdom Under Glass|url=https://archive.org/details/kingdomunderglas0000kirk|url-access=registration|date=2010|publisher=Holt|isbn=978-0-8050-9282-0 }}</ref> in any case, Delia and Reiss soon divorced, and in 1902 Delia married Akeley,<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|title=Mrs. Delia Akeley Howe Dead; Explorer and Hunter in Africa|date=May 23, 1970|work=The New York Times|page=22}}</ref> who by then had become Taxidermist-in-Chief at the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago, later the [[Field Museum of Natural History]].
[[File:Delia Akeley with her kill, photo by Carl Akeley.jpg|thumb|Delia Akeley with her kill (1906)]]
During his years at the Field, she assisted her husband in the creation of his groundbreaking ''Four Seasons of the Virginia Deer'' dioramas, and joined him on a 1906-07 collecting expedition to Africa. Akeley later joined the [[American Museum of Natural History]] in New York where he continued his taxidermy work and conceived the great Africa Hall. Delia accompanied Akeley on expeditions to collect specimens central to the most important displays in the African sections of both museums. The larger of the mounted [[African elephant]]s known as the "Fighting Bulls" in the Field Museum's main hall was killed by Delia on the 1906 Field Museum expedition,<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Akeley|first1=Carl|title=Elephant Hunting on Mt. Kenya: A Woman Wins Record pair of Elephant Tusks for a Sportsman's License in British East Africa|journal=American Museum Journal|date=November 1915|volume=15|issue=7|pages=323–28}}</ref> and she also collected one of the members of the elephant group in the African Hall at the American Museum of Natural History on a 1909-11 expedition for that museum.<ref name="Live">{{cite web|url=https://news.yahoo.com/8-unsung-women-explorers-180658286.html|title=8 Unsung Women Explorers|author=Our Amazing Planet Staff|date=30 April 2012 |publisher=LiveScience.com|accessdate=April 30, 2012}}</ref>

In Kenya, when hunting the elephants that were to form the most important of all the displays in the African Hall of the American Museum of Natural History, Carl Akeley was attacked by a bull elephant while out hunting with a team of his porters and helpers. They panicked and ran thinking he was done for. But Akeley survived, in no small part because Delia traveled back to his body with two porters who had initially fled in terror.<ref>Delia Akeley, "Jungle Rescue", ''Jungle Portraits'', pg. 249 (The MacMillan Company, 1930).</ref> He was seriously injured, but Delia got him to a hospital after a dangerous portage in mountainous country.  She also nursed him back from the brink of death on at least one other occasion when he would have succumbed to blackwater fever<sup>2</sup>

In 1920, after Carl's recovery from blackwater fever, the Akeleys returned to New York accompanied by a pet monkey called "J.T. Jr.", acquired by the Akeleys during their last expeditions in Kenya. Back in New York, Carl Akeley spent his time raising money for the museum, sculpting models for his dioramas, and becoming better acquainted with [[Mary Jobe Akeley|Mary Lenore Jobe]] (1878–1966), a former debutante and Bryn Mawr graduate who had become an African explorer and ethnographer. Delia became increasingly occupied with the care and study of J.T. who was an extremely bright and jealous primate.<ref>{{Citation|title=Carl Akeley's Fighting African Elephants| date=11 December 2013 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UQk7bKf9FI |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211222/-UQk7bKf9FI |archive-date=2021-12-22 |url-status=live|language=en|access-date=2020-05-13}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

Both Bodry-Sanders and Kirk suggest that Delia's obsession with the monkey, and increasing isolation from the outside world, contributed to the deterioration of the Akeley marriage, and an acrimonious divorce occurred in 1923.<ref name=":0" /> 

Carl married his second wife, Mary, in 1924 when he was 60 and she was 46. Both returned to Africa to hunt and study the mountain gorillas. In 1926, Carl contracted what has been described as dysentery but involved aggressive progression and aggressive bleeding from his orifices.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}}