Christian the Lion & Elsa the Lioness and a World Without People
I know you’ve probably seen it. I first saw it last year, bursting into tears out of jealousy or awe or joy or perhaps a combination of all three. I’m talking about the YouTube video of Christian the Lion. You know the story. Two British men find and buy a lion cub on sale at Harrods. They take the cub home, name him Christian, and raise him until they can no longer keep him (as he went from a 35 lb. cub to a 185 lb. young adult lion). Someone found the footage, added Whitney Houston singing Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," and a phenomenon was born.
This video continues where the "famous" one ends. It also has the original narration, music, etc.
What I didn't know... what I could not have known had I not Googled Christian the Lion, is that the old man, the one wearing shorts and walking among the lions, is George Baba ya Simba Adamson.
Yes, Born Free's George Adamson. He and his wife, Joy, raised and cared for Elsa the Lioness, the subject of the films Born Free and Living Free. They made it their life's work to protect lions and other wildlife in Kenya and fought for conservation of wildlife and habitat.
So, I am reading about his life and tragic death (murdered by poachers while saving a tourist) and about his wife's death (also murdered) and I begin to wonder what happened to Elsa. Of course, it doesn't take long to learn that Elsa died at the age of five. Bitten by a tick, she contracted babesiosis, a malaria-like disease that affects large cats. Of course, Christian has by now died as well, seeing as how lions in the wild only live to about 12 to 14 years, though some have lived to 20 years in both the wild and captivity, and the last time John and Ace saw him was in 1974.
Why do these stories move me? I cannot watch the video of Christian's reunion with John and Ace without tears running down my cheeks. I went to , a website devoted to Elsa's memory. Reading about her short life--how Adamson shot her mother and in his regret cared for her and her littermates, how they introduced her back to the wild, only to have her return, a young mother, in the hopes that they would care for her cubs as she lay dying--I wondered why I should feel so passionately about a lion who died eight years before I was even born. Why should the tale of Christian move me to tears?
Am I just a sucker for animals? Or, do I feel deeply guilty because I consider myself an "animal rights" person but I still eat meat? I am a hypocrite, I know it. if PETA only knew...
I recently watched a History Channel special entitled Life Without People, which hypothesized what our world would look like 36 hours, one week, one month, one year, ten years, fifty years, one hundred years, and five hundred years after a sudden and total disappearance of human life on Earth. The show pointed out that many of the dog breeds people keep as pets would not be able to survive long without humans to care for them. We have bred them to have short legs, short snouts, and submissive personalities to suit us. These same traits would doom them if they had to survive on their own. Domestic cats fared better; the show suggested that they would revert to their old hunting instincts.
But, my reaction to this show was one of joy. Watch as the color green returns to the land. Black pitch roads crumble as roots push through toward the sun. Skyscrapers become homes to pigeons, eagles, and, humorously, cats. Those animals that can escape their zoo cages mark new territories in the cities and suburbs we have tried to push them away from. The wolf population would grow exponentially. Forests would expand. The oceans would completely heal in a decade. Fish levels would rise, which would allow walrus and seal to thrive, giving polar bears a fighting chance, and all species of whale would make a comeback. The world could breathe once again.
And I think that's a great thing.
The late, great George Carlin once closed one of his HBO specials with the theory that maybe the Earth allowed Man to gain consciousness because the Earth knew that Man would figure out how to make plastic. Now that we have plastic, Carlin suggested that it was only a matter of time before this big blue marble would shake us off like a bad case of fleas and renew itself once again. I honestly don't think that's a bad idea.
I only want a better world for Christian & Elsa, for Pokie & Indy, Thomesina & Timothy, Griffin & Sabine, Caspian, Lady the Dalmatian and the other Lady, for all the abused elephants in circuses and carnival shows, for hunted rhinos, tigers, gorillas, and hippos, for other animals sold as "exotic pets" who were abandoned when they got too big, and for every cat thrown out of a window and every snake killed for the fact that it was a snake.
But, I still want a salmon dinner every now and then.
I'm a hypocrite.
But, I'm also honest about my hypocrisy.
And that's probably why I cry.
Either that or because I just love lions.
This video continues where the "famous" one ends. It also has the original narration, music, etc.
What I didn't know... what I could not have known had I not Googled Christian the Lion, is that the old man, the one wearing shorts and walking among the lions, is George Baba ya Simba Adamson.
Yes, Born Free's George Adamson. He and his wife, Joy, raised and cared for Elsa the Lioness, the subject of the films Born Free and Living Free. They made it their life's work to protect lions and other wildlife in Kenya and fought for conservation of wildlife and habitat.
So, I am reading about his life and tragic death (murdered by poachers while saving a tourist) and about his wife's death (also murdered) and I begin to wonder what happened to Elsa. Of course, it doesn't take long to learn that Elsa died at the age of five. Bitten by a tick, she contracted babesiosis, a malaria-like disease that affects large cats. Of course, Christian has by now died as well, seeing as how lions in the wild only live to about 12 to 14 years, though some have lived to 20 years in both the wild and captivity, and the last time John and Ace saw him was in 1974.
Why do these stories move me? I cannot watch the video of Christian's reunion with John and Ace without tears running down my cheeks. I went to , a website devoted to Elsa's memory. Reading about her short life--how Adamson shot her mother and in his regret cared for her and her littermates, how they introduced her back to the wild, only to have her return, a young mother, in the hopes that they would care for her cubs as she lay dying--I wondered why I should feel so passionately about a lion who died eight years before I was even born. Why should the tale of Christian move me to tears?
Am I just a sucker for animals? Or, do I feel deeply guilty because I consider myself an "animal rights" person but I still eat meat? I am a hypocrite, I know it. if PETA only knew...
I recently watched a History Channel special entitled Life Without People, which hypothesized what our world would look like 36 hours, one week, one month, one year, ten years, fifty years, one hundred years, and five hundred years after a sudden and total disappearance of human life on Earth. The show pointed out that many of the dog breeds people keep as pets would not be able to survive long without humans to care for them. We have bred them to have short legs, short snouts, and submissive personalities to suit us. These same traits would doom them if they had to survive on their own. Domestic cats fared better; the show suggested that they would revert to their old hunting instincts.
But, my reaction to this show was one of joy. Watch as the color green returns to the land. Black pitch roads crumble as roots push through toward the sun. Skyscrapers become homes to pigeons, eagles, and, humorously, cats. Those animals that can escape their zoo cages mark new territories in the cities and suburbs we have tried to push them away from. The wolf population would grow exponentially. Forests would expand. The oceans would completely heal in a decade. Fish levels would rise, which would allow walrus and seal to thrive, giving polar bears a fighting chance, and all species of whale would make a comeback. The world could breathe once again.
And I think that's a great thing.
The late, great George Carlin once closed one of his HBO specials with the theory that maybe the Earth allowed Man to gain consciousness because the Earth knew that Man would figure out how to make plastic. Now that we have plastic, Carlin suggested that it was only a matter of time before this big blue marble would shake us off like a bad case of fleas and renew itself once again. I honestly don't think that's a bad idea.
I only want a better world for Christian & Elsa, for Pokie & Indy, Thomesina & Timothy, Griffin & Sabine, Caspian, Lady the Dalmatian and the other Lady, for all the abused elephants in circuses and carnival shows, for hunted rhinos, tigers, gorillas, and hippos, for other animals sold as "exotic pets" who were abandoned when they got too big, and for every cat thrown out of a window and every snake killed for the fact that it was a snake.
But, I still want a salmon dinner every now and then.
I'm a hypocrite.
But, I'm also honest about my hypocrisy.
And that's probably why I cry.
Either that or because I just love lions.
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