Lion (sixth story)

The chief that killed bad and bloody lions is still alive, God be blessed! When I see the chief watching the wild life programmes of television I see him smiling sympathetically at us, me and my son, and he says: these aren’t lions! They are kittens! Many times of my life I heard this from the chief! Mainly when I was a boy. I heard him saying «the lions of zoos and the lions of game reserves are kittens». The chief has never explained why the lions were kittens. But now, that I am a man, I know why the lions of the zoos and reserves are kittens. On television we can see the lions always with a big deal of game at the sight of them!! And here it is the reason of the distinction and disparity of the lions. In the wildness the savage lion can never see such thing. He can never see this amount of game. Daily it sees only one gazelle or one other animal, never such amount. And it needs to get the gazelle or if the lion doesn’t succeed in two or three days or four days he will be very weak. Personally, I know the vastness of the wilderness and its void, its emptiness, its frightful appearance, its fierceness, its ranges and extents of thorn trees, its void of animal life. Here the herbivores rove alone, by themselves, and its safety is rooted in the void of another animal, another life near them. The lion must rove all day and all night looking for a prey. He never sleeps. The lion of a reserve is always sleeping. The savage lion needs to march, needs to wander many miles only to see a solitary prey. And he must get that prey!! The preys are rare and they are far scattered. The savage lion works hard and sternly for all his life. We have, all of us, an animal symbol for our representation. It’s a fancy, I know. My animal is the black maned lion of Sahara wilderness. Pity that it is an extinct one in the Nature. Why is the black maned lion my representation? Because it was the lion with the hardest possible life in Nature. In the desert the game was rare and there wasn’t any chance of hiding itself for hunting!!