Lion Called Christian (10 page)

George Adamson and Christian at Kora.

Christian meets Katania for the first time.

Christian preferred to leap from rock to rock in the Tana River, rather than get wet.

Christian picking his way carefully through the thick thorn bushes at Kora.

Bill and Virginia had three young children and several dogs, and from his compound Christian watched their movements closely. He would have loved to be included in their games. At Sophistocat, if Christian had to be in the basement, he was unaware of what he was missing upstairs. Christian did not like to be left out of anything and expected to have the freedom to decide if he wanted to participate. At Leith Hill a twelve-foot-high wire fence prevented him from joining in, but not from seeing the tempting games from which he was excluded. Unless we were with him, he paced the fence with frustration, and very quickly wore a path along it. By now it might have been a cage he was pacing in the same pointless way. After the initial mutual curiosity between Christian and the dogs, they quickly lost interest in one another. But if one of the dogs strayed too close to the fence, Christian would tensely crouch and flatten his ears, imagining he was invisible, but he forgot about his tail, which swished in excitement. Then he would charge the fence and succeed in frightening away the dog, and because of the number of times he succeeded in stalking and almost knocking us to the ground, we felt his natural instincts had not been impaired.

We decided to begin Christian's preparation for Africa in a small way at Leith Hill. By comparisons we had made with other lions at Longleat Safari Park or at zoos, Christian was big for his age, but he needed to be as strong as possible for his new life. With constant exercise and this outdoor life, he looked even healthier and continued to grow rapidly, his body now more in proportion with his head and paws. On a rope from his tree we hung a sack filled with straw, and lie adored attacking it, often swinging entirely off the ground. This was good practice for Kenya, and helped to develop his muscles. He had learned to keep his claws sheathed when we were playing with him; sharp, inch-long claws are an important weapon for a lion, and attacking the sack strengthened them and taught him how to use them efficiently. We also changed Christian's diet. Lions in the wild usually kill in the evenings and have a varied diet. Christian was now given a small milk and Farex meal in the morning and one large evening meal. In addition to raw meat, he had dried meat, carrots, and cow's liver, and sometimes we gave him the head or stomach of a cow. His presence at Leith Hill had not been publicized, and the local butcher, mystified by our meat orders, asked, "What on earth are you two feeding, a crocodile?" As he knew we were living with Bill and Virginia, a lion would have been a far more reasonable assumption.

His new diet improved his coat. It became thicker and softer, and was a beautiful lion-caramel color. His partially black mane became more pronounced, and lie was growing into an extremely handsome lion. He spent more time cleaning and grooming himself, although he was never as fastidious as most domestic cats. His tongue was so rough that his licks on our faces could almost draw blood. He had lost his milk teeth, and he initiated his new ones by destroying several rungs of the ladder to his caravan.

He also had more scope to express himself at Leith Hill, and because we had more time to spend with him and appreciate him away from the demands of the city, our relationship with him grew even deeper and more affectionate. Unity came down from London several times each week to spend the day with him, and new games were invented. He particularly enjoyed playing "wheelbarrows" with her and became adept at tapping ankles and tripping people. He had a variety of toys, a new tire, and several shrubs to play lions behind. He was content, and we found him irresistibly entertaining. Considering his size, he played extremely gently with us and remained easy to manage. It was perfectly safe for any of our visitors to come into the compound with him, except for children who could accidentally be knocked over. A lion prepared to play "wheelbarrows" must have, in addition to a sense of humor, a love for the human race.

Sometimes when it rained he grew quite wild, and then we stayed outside the compound. There was a difficult period when he became aware that he could easily prevent us from leaving the compound by jumping up and holding us with his large front paws. Our smacks just made him more determined. Smacking a lion in a situation such as this required considerable audacity. But within a few days he realized that behavior like this was self-defeating, for it meant we spent less time with him. He decided it was best to continue to cooperate.

We had bought Christian when he was very young, and it had taken months for us to build up our relationship with him. We admired the courage Bill and Virginia had shown playing their roles in the film
Born Free
and working with a cast of many adult lions. There was less opportunity for them to develop relationships that were similar to ours with Christian. As we were soon to leave for Africa, it was pointless for him and Virginia to become too friendly with Christian, but they often came down to his compound to see him. When they were with him, because of their experience with lions, they handled him well.

Christian's life at Leith Hill continued to be filmed, with particular emphasis on the beginnings of his rehabilitation. He had a strong fascination for the documentary director James Hill, and most of our time was spent preventing Christian from jumping on him. James insisted that he was not frightened but just did not want "to have my new trousers torn." He seemed to have new trousers on each day we filmed, and he directed more comfortably from outside the compound.

Bill decided to film Christian's first visit to an English beach. We were not enthusiastic; 3 A.M. is an unappealing time to begin a day, and we knew that it would be us Christian would trample on during the sixty miles there and back. He was now too big to travel in a car, so we went in Bill and Virginia's Dormobile, a motorized caravan. It was the first English beach we had seen as well, and it was gray, dismal, and deserted. But there was a beautiful dawn, and we filmed several sequences of Christian and the four of us running along the beach. He had no intention of getting wet. He enjoyed the outing, but finally tired of waiting on the leash each time until the cameras were positioned. It was unwise to irritate a lion of his size, so we took him home. His paw marks must have confused bathers later in the day.

Christian had now been at Leith Hill for ten weeks, and his life there was losing its attraction. And for us, too, our caravan seemed to shrink in size daily. There had been days of incessant rain, and we found the continuing delays depressing. Christian was becoming frustrated again, and the strain we had felt during his last weeks at Sophistocat returned. He occasionally climbed the wire of his compound. We hoped that this was just a way of attracting our attention rather than an attempt to escape, but we added an overhang for security.

On August 12, 1970 Christian celebrated his first birthday. Unity made him a birthday cake of minced meat. It had one candle on top, and before Christian ate it and the cake, we made a wish that he would soon be in Kenya.

W
e had to prepare Christian for his journey to Kenya, as the long flight to Nairobi would be an ordeal. He was to fly with East African Airways, and regulations required him to travel by crate in the pressurized hold. It was an eleven-hour flight, but because Christian would be put in his crate at Leith Hill, he faced at least fifteen hours of confinement. When Bill was making arrangements with the airline company, a representative said: "There seems to be a mistake, Mr. Travers. Surely you don't intend flying a lion from England to Africa--that's just taking coals to Newcastle."

We investigated the whole question of Christian's flight very thoroughly, and telephoned several animal dealers and zoos for information about the best methods of safely transporting animals. Our research revealed that there was no agreement or even any particular interest in the transportation of exotic animals. We would like to believe that today animal transportation is a much more sensitive and sophisticated operation, but while great care is taken with some animals, most livestock are still transported around the world with little regard for their well-being. There is, for example, ongoing criticism of the conditions under which Australian sheep are shipped to the Middle East. Some of the people we spoke to suggested a small crate to make it impossible for the animal to turn around; the less room, the less scope the animal would have to move and injure himself. We spoke to Oliver Graham-Jones, who had been senior vet at the London Zoo, and was well known at the time for the publicized attempts at insemination of Chi-Chi the panda, who had to be transported from London to Moscow and back. He advised that Christian should be mildly tranquilized by adding a sedative to his food, and that this would safely minimize any frustration. Christian would probably sleep for most of the journey. We decided to order a crate large enough for him to sit upright and turn around in, with bars on one end and a sliding panel at the other. We specifically requested that there be no rough surfaces or sharp edges on which he could injure himself.

When the crate was delivered, we put it in his compound for Christian to become familiar with it. He was fed in it, and we shut his caravan at night to encourage him to sleep in it. Each day we shut him in for short periods so that the actual journey would be less of a shock.

East African Airways quoted a charge at the time of PS2 per pound for flying Christian to Kenya, so we had to weigh him. We borrowed some scales from the even more mystified butcher and tied them to a rope hanging from a tree. We put an empty sack under Christian's stomach, lifted him up, and slipped both ends of the sack onto the hook at the bottom of the scales. He dangled helplessly but good-naturedly. It had been an effort for Bill and us to lift him, and we were not surprised when we saw that he weighed 160 pounds. A veterinary certificate of health was also required, and Christian was examined by a vet and inoculated with Catovac to protect him from diseases he would have no immunity against in Africa.