A Visit to Africa: Part 3

Being in Africa was one of the greatest experiences of my life!

Seriously, I'm not LION to ya!

Besides the elephants, one of the things that had me even more excited to spend two weeks at the Glen Afric Farm was the fact that they had two 11 month old lion cubs that we would get to spend time with!  I really do miss Sasha and Shumba, the white lions!

I have to admit, the image of me hanging out with a couple of lion cubs was never something that popped into my head from time to time.  Why would it?  What are the chances of that happening unless you work at a zoo or live in Africa?  Thanks to Glen Afric, it was just a normal part of my volunteer experience!

Don't let the word "cub" fool you though!  They may only be 11 months old, but they are big kitties!!  They were just below waist height, and would be as tall, if not taller than me when they stood up.  Many people experience having the lion cubs jump up on them much like a dog does when you walk into a house.  Or, you are like me and forget there is a lion behind you while you're sitting down and it jumps up on your back.  SURPRISE!  Didn't take me long to jump to my feet and make sure I kept the lions in front of me from then on! 

We were reminded often that these animals we were spending time with were still LIONS.  They weren't pet cats, or pet lions, they were LIONS.  That's why we were told not to sit down on the ground, touch them while they had meat, or turn your back on them for too long (you know why that's important now).  We always carried a wooden stick with us just in case the lion came too close and we wanted to push them away if we were uncomfortable.  Usually I would just reach out my hand and pet them if they got close to me though. 

Like I said in my first post, play time for Sasha and Shumba usually meant rolling around biting onto each other.  They never showed any signs of it hurting, but I'm pretty sure if I tried playing with them the same way, I wouldn't find it as fun.  Instead, we would roll tires or throw metal bowls for them to chase after.  That was all we could really do to entertain them when they weren't playing together.

One day we got to do something a little different with the cubs.  We put them in a cage trailer and drove them to a different area of the farm where we let them out into a small fenced in area.  Inside, we built a little obstacle course for the cubs to go through.  It wasn't anything extreme, just a couple ramps and platforms to walk across, ending with a two foot high jump to the ground.  We weren't teaching them tricks, or training them for a future circus act.  We were just working with the lions to go through the obstacle course.  Female lions tend to be much better at this sort of thing than male lions (since they usually just lay around all day while the females hunt and what not), so we wanted to really get Shumba going through the course good.  We stuck a chuck of meat on a stick and got them to follow it through the course.  After their little jump at the end of it, they received the meat and a "Good job!!"

Another form of interaction with the cubs was when we took them for a walk out in the bush.  Usually they are in their enclosure, but sometimes they get to go for a walk out in the open!  Really it was just spending time with them in a different scenery.  It was intimidating being with them out in the open anymore than it was in the enclosure.  Instead, the lions just got to have some fun and roam around a bit!  They would play, wander off a little bit (but always come back when called), and take breaks in the shade!  It was really cool knowing that I was walking with two actual lions in Africa!

Another thing we did was getting the lions to chase after a bag that was being pulled by the motor.  Since the lions are sometimes used in films/commercials, I believe this would be how they would get the lions to run towards the camera.  We tried it for the first time with the cubs as well, and it was a success!  For the adult lions we did it with, only two of the four chased after the bag, but it was still fun to watch!

Sorry, the internet is kinda slow here tonight so I'm going to end this post here!  That's plenty of lions for one post though right? 

Until next time,

Wesley