Part of the Pride (18 page)

A better model for raising cubs was staring me in the face, but people said it couldn't be done. What if we could have the best of both worlds—cubs being raised by their mother, but with me allowed to go in with them while they were still small, to habituate them to humans and form relationships with them? I thought that if Tau or Napoleon could mate with Maditau, one of the female cubs who had been born about six months after my boys, and I could get Maditau to accept me around her babies, then we would solve a number of issues. The cubs would grow up healthy and strong; they would get used to me from the start of their lives; the Lion Park would save on hand-raising costs; Maditau would not go into estrus and breed again; and visitors would get to see a whole pride in action.

Further down the track, the male cubs could be separated from the pride once they came of age—and I had already formed a relationship with them—and the female cubs could stay with the pride,
on the contraceptive pill, so Tau and Napoleon would be unable to mate with them, as these lions would be their daughters.

In the wild, the problem of fathers mating with daughters is usually solved by the fact that by the time female cubs are sexually mature, the pride males have been kicked out by new, unrelated males. However, in areas that are over-hunted or heavily poached, dominant males may stay in charge longer, and eventually mate with their daughters, causing problems with interbreeding. Likewise, if the dominant male is killed off too soon by a hunter, younger males can end up mating with their siblings and even mothers and aunts.

The idea of interacting with cubs while they were still with their mothers sounded good in theory, but would a lioness let me get near her cubs? And, more important, would even I be crazy enough to try?

EIGHT
 
The Lion Farmer

 

 

 

Mandy and I were having dinner in a restaurant one night with some people we knew and others we'd met for the first time.

A woman I'd just been introduced to said to me across the table, “I know you work with lions and I think it's wrong to keep them in captivity.”

I could have been upset that someone I'd just met felt entitled to make such a sweeping statement, but I'm used to it. “What about cows?”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Do you think it's wrong to keep cows enclosed on a farm? They're descended, way back, from wild animals, and were domesticated.”

She raised her nose a little, and took on a look of understanding where I was coming from, mixed with superiority. “I'm a vegetarian and I don't agree with keeping animals for meat.”

“That's a very nice leather strap you have on your watch,” I said to her, then lifted the tablecloth and took a peek underneath. “And you have nice leather shoes, as well. I bet you have leather seats in
your car. Do you think it's wrong to farm cows for meat, but right to kill them for their skins?”

“That's irrelevant,” she said, as people do when they know they're losing an argument. “Cows are kept for consumption, and even though I don't like it I can understand it, but lions aren't kept for consumption, they're kept to be shot by trophy hunters.”

Certainly, no one is going to shoot any of my lions for sport, but I wanted to keep playing devil's advocate—at least until the main course arrived. “Okay,” I continued, “if people ate lions would that make it okay to keep them?”

“No.”

“Why not? People farm crocodiles for their meat and their leather. If that's okay, why couldn't you farm a lion if you ate the meat and used its skin? That's consumption. Wouldn't that make it all right?”

“No.”

“Oh,” I said, leaning back in the chair, “so it's okay to keep and kill cows and crocodiles for meat and leather, but not lions. Is a cow worth less than a lion?”

She couldn't answer me. It's an argument that goes around and around in circles, and one in which people have very set opinions which don't always hold up to close scrutiny. People always like to categorize things and other people, and this pro cess usually involves a line they won't cross. Consciously or unconsciously, the woman in the restaurant had drawn a line between meat and leather. She thought it wrong to kill an animal for its meat, but okay to execute it for its skin. Odd. Following on from her logic, people who kept cows were all right, but people like me, who kept lions, were horrible.

When I thought about it, I realized that like everyone else in the world I had my lines when it came to lions.

Like many other people in South Africa and subsequently around the world, I was shocked when our local
Carte Blanche
television
current affairs program showed images of a lioness in a cage being shot during a “canned” hunt. I was working in the Lion Park at the time, developing my close bond with Tau and Napoleon. Canned hunting is a term for shooting an animal which has been bred for the sole purpose of being killed as a trophy, for money. In the case in point, the lioness had been lured closer to the hunter by placing one of her cubs in a neighboring cage.

I cannot understand why someone would pick up a gun and shoot a lion simply because the animal has a big black mane. Nor can I understand why someone would shoot a magnificent kudu bull just because the antelope has a nice pair of long curly horns. I can, however, understand why someone would kill an antelope for its meat. To me, that is the same as killing a cow for steak.

As someone who keeps lions and knows a thing or two about them, I started thinking about lion hunting, in the wild and on farms where the so-called canned hunts take place. This is an emotional issue, especially in Africa, but outside it, as well. I'm not the sort of person who listens to conventional wisdom and takes the views of others as gospel. I never have been and so I decided the best way for me to make an informed judgment about lion hunting, and farms where lions were bred to be shot, was to go and see one of these places for myself.

I contacted the owner of a hunting lodge where they bred lions and he agreed to show me around. I won't say where in South Africa it was, but it was far enough from my home for me to justify flying myself there in a light aircraft.

I love flying, and I fly the way I interact with my lions. When there is someone else in the aircraft—just like when there are visitors watching me with my lions—I keep it toned down and conservative. I don't show off for people in front of my lions, or push their limits, and I take the same approach when I'm piloting an airplane. When I'm alone, however, it's a different story. When I'm flying solo I'm never unsafe and I don't break the law, but I do enjoy myself. It
was good to be airborne again, and the sun streamed into the cockpit as I passed over open plains of golden grass and the neat geometric circles and rectangles of cultivated fields. As my course took me farther into the heart of the country, the farmland gave way to more rugged country, hills and valleys covered in the gray-greens and khakis of the bush. Away from the tarred highways, graded dirt roads ran like red arteries back into the heart of Africa.

I checked the GPS and found the remote airstrip. Banking, I executed a low-level pass over the airstrip to make sure there was no game grazing on the close-cropped grass.

The farmer who had agreed to host me was waiting for me, leaning against the warm side of his dusty Land Cruiser pickup, his eyes shaded by the brim of his bush hat, arms folded. I climbed down from the plane, took off my sunglasses, and walked over. He was a young guy—younger than he'd sounded on the phone—but like most farmers I've met, his face and arms and legs were tanned from a life outdoors in the sun. His handshake was firm.

I threw my bag in the back of the Cruiser, and as he drove me to the farm I asked Dirk, as I'll call him, how long he had been running the hunting farm.

“All my life. I was born to be a
leeu boer
,” Dirk said, using the Afrikaans term for lion farmer as he navigated along the corrugated road. “My father farmed lions and so did my grandfather. My father bought this farm many years ago. This is the only place I have ever lived.”

“Why lions?” I asked him.

He shrugged and looked at me. “Why not? Like the man down the road on the next property breeds cows, my family breeds lions. We don't see them like your Tau and Napoleon at the Lion Park. For us the lions are commodities, not pets.”

“Are you a hunter?” Dirk asked me.

“I like fly fishing,” I said.

“Do you eat what you catch, or do you have the fish stuffed and mounted?”

“I mostly catch and release,” I said honestly, “and besides, the big ones taste like crap.” He smiled. “Hunting's not for me, but I can understand why some people want to do it. A lot of people tell me it's not right for me to go into the enclosures with my lions or to domesticate them, but that just makes me want to do it even more.”

“I thought that since you love the lions so much you must be one of those bunny-huggers that think they know everything,” Dirk said as we neared the farm buildings.

“I'm not a hunter and I'm not a bunny-hugger,” I assured him. “I'm probably somewhere in the middle.”

“What we do is not illegal, you know? This four-by-four
bakkie
that we're driving in was paid for by lion farming and lion hunting. I pay my taxes like every other honest person.”

Dirk stopped near a high electrified fence, got out, and unlocked the gate, which he slid open. I got out and closed it behind the Land Cruiser as he drove through. Once inside the perimeter fence, we walked to the cages and I saw his lions.

At first I was horrified, and then I became angry. In cage after cage there were lions and lions and lions—more than I had ever seen in one place. I can't remember how many there were—scores or maybe hundreds. They were mostly males, and of varying ages, as this was obviously where the money was for trophies. I saw tiny cubs still squeaking and squawking; youngsters that reminded me of Tau and Napoleon when I'd first met them; and two- and three-year-olds that did nothing to hide their anger and resentment as we walked past them. The biggest males, with dark manes, would be the next to die. The females were breeders, pure and simple, no different than hens on an egg farm. What a life these poor cats must lead, I thought to myself.

We left the cages and drove back to the farmhouse. On the drive
I thought about what I'd seen. I am an observer, and I had taken note of the conditions in the cages. The lions were well fed and watered and their cages were kept clean. I suppose the lion farmer kept things clean and orderly for the same reason I do—to keep my lions healthy and prevent the spread of flies. The adult males were in good health, and I imagined that a rich professional hunter from overseas would not want to shoot a mangy lion with his ribs showing, any more than a film or documentary-maker would want to see one of my lions in less than top condition,

As we drove through the gate to Dirk's home, I realized that if I had been looking at pigs or cows or chickens or goats instead of lions, I wouldn't have found anything wrong with this farm. These lions were not “free range” but neither were they being mistreated. Once I stopped thinking about how Tau and Napoleon would feel if they were penned in like Dirk's lions, with no enrichment or stimulation, and started thinking of these animals in the same way as I might judge domestic cows, my anger abated.

I wondered if Dirk might ever be persuaded to take up some other form of farming, but then I saw his two small sons playing in the garden. Each had a toy rifle and they were playing at shooting big game, stalking imaginary lions and leopards and buffalo.

“I've organized for you to go on a hunt, Kev. Are you still keen?” Dirk asked.

“Sure.” I didn't know if I would have the nerve to watch a lion being shot, but Dirk's client, a wealthy American businessman, would also be hunting other game on the farm.

That afternoon I climbed into the Land Cruiser and was introduced to Dirk's client. I looked around for a rifle, but didn't see one. “What are you going to shoot with?” The American drew a .44 Magnum pistol from a hand-tooled leather holster and proudly held it up for my inspection, its nickel-plated barrel glinting in the afternoon sun.

We left the farm and drove out into the bush. Dirk slowed the four-by-four and pointed off to the left. “Sable,” he said quietly.

“Where?” the American asked.

While Dirk gave an indication of where it was, I looked at the majestic creature. The sable is one of the most beautiful antelopes on the planet. The males have a jet black coat with white markings on their faces and are quite striking, while the females are a rich red-brown. What makes the sable—the males in particular—so attractive to trophy hunters are their long curved horns. A sable can kill a lion with a backwards thrust of his head, piercing his attacker with the sharp points.