Part of the Pride (20 page)

 

 

 

Voluptuousness is a quality prized in some African cultures. A woman who is well rounded—all around—is considered attractive to many African men. Lenny the cheetah was an all-African male.

When I finished my morning coffee at the Lion Park I met up with the latest crop of volunteers. The park, like several other African wildlife, educational, and charitable organizations, accepts volunteer workers from abroad. They tend to be backpackers who have a bit of extra time to spend on the continent, and want to contribute something.

This group was pretty typical. There were about half a dozen of them and they hailed from all around the world. Holland, Germany, and Italy were represented, and there was an Australian and a New Zealander. This group was all pretty young, and mostly women, but the age range varied enormously, from kids just out of school on their gap year through to people in their seventies.

After I took them in with the lion cubs, I made them wait outside the big lions' enclosure while I went in and did my stuff with Tau and Napoleon. As usual, I toned down my play in the presence
of strangers, as I had learned from Tsavo that animals can react very differently when there is an audience at hand. I went in with a plastic atomizer bottle and I sprayed some of the liquid near the lions' huge, hairy faces. The boys sniffed the air and rubbed against me, urging me to spray more.

“What's that spray?” the Aussie girl asked, preempting my explanation.

“It's a mix of water, citronella, and other goodies. Cats love scents and this stuff is like catnip for lions. They like to sniff it and rub it.” To further demonstrate, I sprayed some on the grass and Napoleon lowered his massive body to the ground and began rolling in it. We left the boys and I went in with some of my other lions—Siam, Kaiser, and Gandalf, one of my white lions. Kaiser loves the spray, and was pushing his shaggy head against me to get some more of it while the volunteers watched and took photos from outside the enclosure fence.

“What would happen if one of us went in there with you?” asked a young German guy.

It's a good question, and it always comes up. “I don't know,” I answered truthfully. “Lions can smell fear and the adrenaline coursing through your body. If you walked in confidently and showed no sign of fear, you might be okay. Or this lion could decide he didn't like you and he could charge into you, go for your stomach or throat, put you on the ground, and kill you.”

Now that I was sure I had their attention, I continued the explanation. “I've known all these lions since they were born. I haven't hand-raised them all, but I've spent time with them, and I have a relationship with them. They're between two and three years old—roughly equivalent to the teen years in humans, so some of them have an attitude. I know them, so I can relate to them, but if a stranger comes in with them, it's like, say, if your parents had split up when you were young. If your father suddenly reappears in your
life when you're a teen, you might tolerate him, or you might think he's an idiot and you'd like to smack him for thinking he can just drop in and out of your life.”

The volunteers were nodding. It's an analogy I often use, because lions, like people, are unpredictable. I then went on to explain the differences between my family, friends, and acquaintance classifications for my animals. “That one over there,” I said, pointing to a lion I have a healthy respect for, “is an acquaintance. We know each other and we work in the same place and we get on, but like some humans, I know as soon as I turn my back on him he's quite likely to stab me in the back.”

What I did tell this group of volunteers, like every group before to that date, was that once we left the lion enclosures, as we did that morning, they would be able to go into an enclosure with a fully grown cheetah.

From the start, Rodney Fuhr had wanted to broaden the Lion Park into a predator park, which was how we ended up with the hyenas, the leopards, the jaguars, and some cheetahs.

Some people in Africa keep cheetahs as pets and, generally speaking, they are not aggressive towards human beings. Filmmakers, and even tourists in the Masai Mara in Kenya and Serengeti in Tanzania, have had cheetahs climb up onto the hoods and roofs of their vehicles in order to get a better view of the surrounding savannah while searching for food. We had an old cheetah called Ricksey who was fine around volunteers for a number of years, but after he retired we started using Lenny, a younger male, and Arusha, a female of similar age, as our star attractions for the volunteers' visits.

I slid open the gate and the young volunteers filed in, a little apprehensively, behind me. I think I could smell their fear, though a couple of the guys tried to exude confidence. As the volunteers might be working with the cheetahs, we wanted everyone to get to know each other. Arusha was never a problem. She padded over to
me on cue and started licking and nuzzling me. One of the volunteers reached out to pet her and she was as gentle as a kitten, a very big, noisily purring kitten.

“Cheetah are not ferocious man-eating cats,” I told the group as they stroked the pliant Arusha. “I don't think there has ever been a recorded fatality of a cheetah killing a human in captivity or the wild—in fact, I would probably put money on it.” The volunteers nodded bravely.

“Lenny, come boy,” I called. Lenny got up from the shady spot where he had been sitting and walked towards us.

Lenny studied the group of young people, who had fanned out behind me so they could start taking pictures of our magnificent male cheetah.

“Stay close to me, but it's okay to pet him,” I said. “Watch out for his teeth.”

Lenny started trotting, and I sensed a determination in his long-legged stride. A few of the braver volunteers stepped forward and started to run their hands down Lenny's spotted flanks when he reached the group. “Good boy, Lenny,” I said, scratching and grooming him.

But Lenny, though he may have enjoyed the petting, had one thing and one thing only on his mind.

He darted away from those of us who were stroking him, and quick as a flash he was behind us. He lunged at the female volunteer he had singled out, wrapped his paws around her waist, and hooked onto her with his dew claw. Not many people know that a cheetah's dew claws are retractable, but Lenny had his out and he meant business.

The girl shrieked as the sharp claws pierced her clothing and met soft skin. The other volunteers stepped back out of the way. A couple ran for the gate. With his prey in his grasp, Lenny bit down on the piece of the girl he wanted—her behind.

“Lenny, off!” I shouted, and smacked him on the nose. Lenny bit
down on his mouthful of butt, but eventually I managed to prize his jaws from the tender, succulent flesh. The poor girl was screaming as I ushered her out of the enclosure.

“Give us some privacy, please,” I said to the others. The girl unzipped her jeans and lowered them. There on the pale white skin of her bottom were four neat red puncture marks. “I'll have to clean them,” I said.

The girl groaned. “Will I need a tetanus shot?” she wailed.

“I'm afraid so,” I said to her. I pitied her, as I myself would have been a lot more worried about the needle than Lenny's bite, but he had drawn blood.

That was the last time we let volunteers in with an adult cheetah. It was the third time Lenny had tried to bite a volunteer, though the first time he had successfully sunk his teeth into his target. With some groups Lenny was fine, but on each of the three occasions when he had caused trouble, there was a young lady in the group with what I can only describe as a derriere that pushed Lenny's particular button. And it was only girls he was interested in. There had been amply padded men in the enclosure and Lenny had ignored them.

I was in a difficult position. I could hardly say to one member of a group of volunteers, “Sorry, you can't go in with Lenny because Lenny likes booty.”

Even old Ricksey, who was a far better behaved cheetah than Lenny, could be unpredictable.

Ricksey was the first cheetah we bought for the Lion Park and Ian had scoured the zoos and parks of South Africa to find him. There were plenty of places breeding cheetahs, for tourism or release into the wild, but they were reluctant to sell their cats and when they did offer us one, they would invariably ask for a huge amount of money.

Eventually an Afrikaner farmer from the Free State returned Ian's call, saying he would sell us a cheetah for a reasonable price.

“Is it tame?” Ian asked the farmer over the phone.

“Tame, man? This thing is
hondmak
,” he replied, meaning his cheetah was “dog tame.” He assured us that Ricksey was a brilliant cheetah, in top condition, who was also very good with people. Someone went to the Free State to fetch him. I was so excited about working with our first cheetah, but when I first saw Ricksey he looked like he had been dragged out of his death bed.

One ear was half moth-eaten; his eyes were glazed over; his breath stank; and his fur was in poor condition, like the fuzz that lions get when they're old and nearly dead. With the benefit of some knowledge I'd now say that Ricksey was probably twelve years old, as he lived another couple of years, and even in captivity cheetah only reach about fifteen or so.

He was a nice boy, though. He was friendly, although he wasn't exactly
hondmak
, because he used to have little attacks of aggression now and then. I would be scratching him under the chin and he'd be purring loudly, and then all of a sudden he would rear up in a frenzied ball of yellow and black fur like he'd been shocked with ten thousand volts and try to attack me. Eventually he would calm down, and he was very good with the volunteers, unlike his successor, Lenny.

I met my wife, Mandy, at a very rough bar. It was called Tempos and was the kind of place that would have strippers at lunchtime to cater to the working crowd. Mandy was a personal assistant at an insurance company at the time. Tempos is on the R512, not far from the Lion Park and near where I lived. On the weekends there was a slightly better, mixed crowd, and a mate of mine invited me to drinks there on a Sunday.

I had a black eye, as two weeks before I had been at Tempos on
the Monday of a long weekend, and I had been in a fight. I had been chatting to girl and we were getting on quite well, but she had neglected to mention that she had a boyfriend. When her boyfriend showed up, I said; “Howzit,” and he head-butted me.

“I'm never going back to that place,” I said to my mate.

“No, come. It'll be fun.”

So I walked into Tempos with my mate. As soon as he was inside he was scanning the bar for girls. “Check, over there,” he said, pointing to two attractive females.

I fingered my eye and told him I'd go to the bar and order the drinks. When I had paid for our drinks, I saw my friend had already struck up a conversation with the two girls, and was focusing on one in particular. Her friend was blonde—at the time—and very pretty. I smiled as I approached.

“This is the guy,” my mate said. “Kevin works at the Lion Park, with the lions. Serious. You must come to the park and see him in action. Kevin will put on his show for you and wrestle with the lions—won't you, Kev?”

I groaned inwardly. It's embarrassing when your mates use you as their pickup line. It wasn't the first time it had happened, so I agreed to show the girls around the park and my mate got busy organizing dates and times and sourcing phone numbers.

A week later I was at the Lion Park with my mate, who was waiting expectantly to see “his” girl again. Instead, Mandy, the blonde-haired girl, showed up with a girl neither of us guys had seen before. My mate was devastated, as he had packed a picnic and planned to make some serious moves. Undeterred, I set off, giving everyone the grand tour of the Lion Park.

Tau and Napoleon, as usual, were as good as gold with me, and we moved on to Ricksey's enclosure. “Ricksey's tame. We can all go in with him, Come,” I said to the girls and my mate.

No sooner had I stepped into the enclosure than Ricksey charged me and started smacking me with his paws. “Calm down, my boy,”
I said, as his running claws scratched my arms and legs. I was smiling and laughing, putting on a brave face as the expert lion keeper, but Ricksey was in the midst of one of his psycho attacks. “Good boy, Ricksy,” I said as he ripped my pants. “Don't you want to come in, guys?” I called to the others, who had stopped near the gate of the enclosure.

“Um, no, I don't think so,” Mandy said.

I emerged with a torn shirt and pants and several scratches, laughing off Ricksey's little incident as nothing. Mandy clearly thought I was an idiot. I could hear her saying later that day to her friend, “They say this guy's got a gift, but it's more like a death wish.”

Despite Ricksey's fits, he was a fantastic animal and we wanted more cheetah. We managed to buy Lenny and Arusha when they were still cubs, at about six months, but they were a step away from heaven's gates when we got them. Our vet was not impressed with our purchase. She looked at us like kids who had gone to a pet shop and bought the runt because we felt sorry for it, or who had picked up a mangy stray on their way home from school. Arusha was slightly better off than her brother, but Lenny was riddled with problems.

Anyway, we didn't really have a choice. We could have walked away from the deal, but we wanted cheetahs desperately, so we took what we could get. Lenny and Arusha needed twenty-four-seven care and I took them on.

Despite my “impressive” performance in front of her with Ricksey, Mandy had agreed to go out with me after our picnic at the Lion Park, and by the time Lenny and Arusha came along we had moved in together, in a town house in Lone Hill.

Mandy has been an inspiration to me, as well as a pillar of support during the tough times in my life. I'm able to bounce ideas off her and she is forthright and honest in coming back at me with her opinions. She believes firmly in what I do, how I do it, and why I do
it. It's fantastic for me to have a partner who doesn't see herself as being in competition with the animals in my life. Mandy loves animals, though fortunately not in the same hands-on way that I relate to them. We're different people, and while we have both worked together at the Lion Park and around animals, there has never been competition between us on the work front, which I think is important. Mandy works in public relations and marketing, so she is great with people, while I am less into socializing with humans. I prefer my animals.