Sunday 5 April 2009

A lion called Christian

At first, I was just looking at pictures of baby animals like..

... this baby pygmy marmoset here.. basically, one of the smallest monkeys ever!

Adorable red panda cubs..

.. which eventually grow into this..

A baby lemur.. think King Julian from Madagascar =P

Then things got a bit more emo. I came across Christian the lion. Apparently, Harrods dealt with exotic animals back in the 60s. In 1969, 2 hippies, John Rendall and Ace Bourke, bought a lion cub from there. The lion was called Christian and he lived with them in a Chelsea flat, hung out in a furniture shop and exercised in a graveyard. There are videoes on youtube of Christian playing with his owners on the beach, in the country etc..


John and Ace decided to release Christian back to the wild in Africa because he was a wild animal, too wild for London despite being domesticated. It's really funny because their first night in Africa, Christian still slept on a bed with pillows and just accepted the other wild animals as part of the landscape.


Christian was introduced to another lion and a cub so they could start their own pride. What I really wanna highlight is that a year later, John and Ace returned to visit Christian and he still recognised them!! He went up to them, hugged them and nuzzled them.. Tears just flowed from my eyes when I watched this video.. it's really, really touching so I just wanna share this with y'all out there.


Interesting links can be found here:


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