Part of the Pride (33 page)

I had high hopes for Thunder. He's not the biggest male lion I've ever seen, but he often became aggressive at feeding time. Well, when we let him loose and turned on the animatronic lion, he went for that thing like a lion possessed. Unlike Napoleon he didn't want to realize it was a mechanical dummy. He leapt on it and started clawing it to pieces.

“Lift it up, lift it up,” I shouted at the animatronics guy.

“I'm trying, but it can't get up,” the guy replied, flicking all his switches.

Thunder had pinned the pretend lion down, and the distribution of his weight and his sheer brute strength were preventing the hydraulics from working. Thunder was so enraged he broke the animatronics metal spine in three places and smashed its jaw and its arm. He snapped through welded metal and it took them a day and a half to fix their lion.

“I don't believe it,” one of the animatronics guys said to me after the attack. “These lions are like gentle giants with you.”

I nodded. “And now you understand how powerful they are compared to us puny humans.”

We got some fantastic footage of Thunder annihilating the animatronic lion. He was a star, incredibly agile and blindingly quick, and he really seemed to enjoy hammering his opponent. The bar had been raised, and when it came to the white lions we had a similar mix of reactions. I tried Bravo and a couple of the younger white lions and they were pretty good, but what we really needed next was our big white male, Thor, one of the replacements for Letsatsi, to have a go.

I went through the by now usual sequence and Thor leapt across to the brown-coated mechanical king of beasts and grabbed it by the throat in his jaws. Thor stood there, holding on to the machine, but that was all he did. He seemed to see no need to fight it or rear up or jump on it. He simply took hold of the skin in his mouth and stood there. I really needed Thor to perform and I felt the pressure building on me to somehow make the animal do what we wanted him to do.

“Let's try again,” I said to the crew. We switched the machine off and tried again.

Thor did exactly the same thing, again and again. Each time we set up the shot, he would take hold of the animatronic lion in his jaws and hang on to it.

“I'll try making the meat move while he's got hold of the animatronic lion,” I said to the crew. “Maybe that'll make him angrier.”

What I was doing, in effect, was trying to get my lion to do something he didn't want to do, and I should have known that it would end badly. I picked up a stick and while Thor was biting down on the robot I jiggled the meat about, teasing Thor into a reaction.

Thor let go of the machine and turned on me. He took my arm in his mouth and pushed me up against the filming cage. I held my
ground against him as best as I could, staring at him. Thor glared back at me, flicked his tail, and released my arm. He turned and went back to his meat, which was definitely not jiggling anymore.

“I'm fine,” I assured the breathless camera crew. When I checked my arm I saw there was not a single puncture mark, yet Thor had pinned me solidly against the wall of the cage.

“Enough is enough, Kev,” Thor had said to me with that one lightning-fast reaction.

It taught me again, as if I needed to be reminded once more, that a lion is not like a light. They do not have an on-off switch in their brains that turns them from tame animal to frenzied killer in an instant. Thor, like Tsavo, had the ability to send me a message. He had probably been giving me other signs that I had either missed or ignored, but by grabbing me by the arm, he was able to tell me in no uncertain terms that he did not want to do what I wanted under any circumstance, and that he resented the way I was behaving.

I called an end to filming Thor with the animatronic lion, as he had set his boundaries and I did not want to push them. I could not afford to lose Thor's friendship, for the film's sake or for mine, and I didn't want a casualty on the set—especially not me. The footage was brilliant by most people's standards, but it was the push for perfection that had led me into trouble again. Perfection seems to be a vice of mine.

Fortunately, lions forgive faster than people do and I was able to start filming other scenes with Thor within a day or two. Like a lot of human actors, he had blown up when pushed, but the difference was, he didn't storm off the set.

On the set of the movie I broke both my rules. I often overruled my sixth sense to get a shot and I also succumbed to peer pressure. I just thank the good Lord that the animals were understanding. I was lucky that Thor sent me a warning as one friend to another, rather than killing me.

We were filming Thor again on Nash's farm, where everything that could go wrong with Letsatsi had gone wrong.

Once more, we wanted to get shots of an adult male white lion striding across a vast open area, this time from the air. We hired a helicopter for this day's filming and my idea was that I would leave Rodney Nombekana on the ground with Thor and I would keep an eye on things from the air. We wanted as few people on the ground as possible, as each of them would have to be “painted” out of the film. Rodney was wearing a camouflage poncho which he would use to cover himself and blend in with the grass whenever he paused. I had complete faith in Rodney; besides, I wanted a ride in the helicopter. However, once we started Rod radioed and asked if I would come down with them. Perhaps, like me, he still had the nightmares about Letsatsi on the day of the promo shoot.

As much as I was enjoying the helicopter ride I tapped the pilot on the arm and asked him to set me down. I chatted to Rodney and Thor, and the lion seemed fine. We set him on his way and he strode obediently, and calmly, across the veld. I also donned a poncho so I could hide from the camera. When Mike Swan, who was filming from the helicopter, radioed that he had shot enough footage, the aircraft took him away. I had decided to stay with Rodney Nombekana and help him load Thor onto the truck and ride back with them.

The driver had moved the vehicle about three kilometers—nearly two miles—away so that it would be out of the wide shots being filmed from the helicopter. As always, filming against the lush green background of summer grasses meant that mud was our constant companion.

“Kev,” I heard the driver's voice say over the radio, “I'm afraid the truck's stuck.”

I ran a hand through my hair in annoyance. “We can't walk this bloody lion three kilometers. He's been walking backwards and forwards all day and he's tired. We'll wait for you to get unstuck.”

We had been shooting in the golden rays of the afternoon sun and now the light was fading. There was nothing else to do so Thor, Rodney, and I stopped and took in the view. As I looked out over the changing colors of the glorious African landscape, my mood calmed.

I shook my head. Who else in the world gets to walk freely through the most beautiful countryside in the world with an adult male lion and a glorious sunset on the horizon? It was a postcard picture laid out in front of us, rolling hills leading to mountains, and not another single human in sight. Thor made himself comfortable on the grass and Rodney sat on a rock beside him. I plonked myself down on Thor, which he loves, sitting on the lion's rump.

With all the stress and the crap I'd been through, I'd started to forget that I have a very good life. I was living a story anyone would be proud to tell their kids and grandkids later in life.

“All we need is a nice drink for sundowners, Rod,” I said. He laughed, and we sat there in silence, happy for the truck to take its time finding us.

For a while we were alone in this incredible African landscape, three friends sharing a moment. A black guy, a white guy, and a lion. It was perfect.

EPILOGUE
 
A Pride of One's Own

 

 

 

When the truck finally freed itself from the mud about an hour later, it drove towards us, coming down the nearest road. When he heard the sound of the engine, Thor got up and led us to it. He didn't need to be ordered or bribed with meat, he just knew it was time to go home.

“How's your wife and child, Rod?” I asked as we walked along in the darkness behind Thor's guiding white coat.

“Fine, Kev. And you? Are you coping okay with all the hassles about the film?”

We chatted like that as we followed Thor. When he reached the vehicle, Thor climbed up of his own volition, got in, and we all drove home. To this day when Rodney and I have our business meetings it is often in the company of Thor on a long walk through the bush. Other people discuss the day's agenda around a table with their laptop computers open in front of them, but Rod and I walk with our lion.

I live and work at a different park these days, the Kingdom of the White Lion. Rodney Fuhr was concerned that the Johannesburg
Lion Park was too close to the city. In fact, human development has overtaken it so that instead of being in the countryside, as it was when I was a boy, it is now virtually part of suburbia.

I was involved in Rodney's search for a new piece of land and there was an extensive list of criteria that had to be met. It had to be farther out of Johannesburg, but still close enough for people to drive to for a day trip, with enough bush to provide shade and a natural habitat for the lions, but open enough to be accessible.

We eventually found the right property. It's beautiful country, a mix of open grasslands and rocky hills and valleys on the banks of the Crocodile River. We decided to film part of
White Lion
on the property, so I was able to design and build large enclosures which are ideal for filming. I had learned from my experience at the Lion Park about what works and what doesn't, and it was good to be starting from scratch.

At the Kingdom, we rotate our animals through the different enclosures, which helps keep them interested and engaged. When the lions move into an area formerly occupied by hyenas, they get busy sniffing and scent-marking and the same goes for the hyenas. We have retained as much of the natural bush as possible, and the enclosure where the hyenas now live has a natural stream running through it. They love bathing in it and they are always assured of fresh water.

It was tough for me, moving from my work at the Johannesburg Lion Park. While I was able to bring many of my animal friends with me, there was no way I could bring all of them. Although the process was expensive, at least I now have control over their destiny.

Rodney Nombekana and Helga moved to the new park with me. Volunteers from the Lion Park come to the Kingdom of the White Lion to spend time with me and to meet the animals many of them have seen on television. I will have school groups coming to visit, now that the film is finished, which I think is incredibly important in order to educate the next generation about predators, and explode
some of the myths and misconceptions about African wildlife. I hope one day to open the Kingdom to the general public.

Looking to the future, I am in the process of setting up a not-for profit company to ensure the future well-being of the animals in my care. I have been contacted by many people who have seen
Dangerous Companions
,
Growing Up Hyena
, and
Black Leopard
who want to donate money to support predators and predator research. I would like to be able to help raise money to ensure the valuable work the researchers do at Rodney Fuhr's research camp in Botswana can continue. I also want to ensure that if anything happens to me, my lions and other friends would be cared for.

There are more documentaries in the cards, though whether or not I venture into the world of feature filmmaking again will depend on the success or otherwise of
White Lion
.

I don't want to continue with animals in feature films in the way that I did on
White Lion
. I don't know if
White Lion
will be successful or not. If the movie is a huge success and we had, for example, an opportunity to make
White Lion II
, I would love to be involved, but I would wear only one cap. I do not want to be put in a position again where I am responsible for the welfare and performance of my lions on one hand, and under pressure as a producer to call on them to do take after take, until the animals are exhausted, in order to get a “perfect” shot. I don't want to put myself or my animals through that again. In fact, I would have to think twice about using my own animals in a feature film of that length again.