A Lion Called Christian is the true story of a lion whom two young Australian men purchahsed from Harrods Department Store in 1969, kept as a roommate for a while in London, and then rehabilitated and returned to the wild in Kenya in 1971.
Young and footloose travelers in 1969, Anthony Bourke and John Rendall bought the lion almost on a lark. The truth is, they gave it some though and spent time visiting the creature in the zoo section of the department store (back in the day when nobody thought twice about trading in exotic animals). They also thought they could give it a better life than it might otherwise have if it were purchased and confined to a cage in a zoo.
For as long as they could, they kept Christian in their home and in Sophisticat, the antiques store where they worked. For quite some time, Christian was good for business. He brought in business as well as gawkers. He was a cheerful, loving, fun animal--almost more dog than cat though he was most supremely a king cat.
As Christian grew and his need for more space and more food and more exercise grew, his friends quite by chance hooked up with George Adamson, who was at the time trying to establish a pride of rehabilitated lions in Kenya. Adamson agreed to take on Christian. Many months would roll by before Christian would touch Kenyan soil, but he would return to the land of his forebears and successfully integrate himself there. He would make friends among his own kind and lose them in the unforgiving wilderness.
In 1971, when Bourke and Rendall returned to Kenya to see their former flatmate, they would be greeted by a thriving lion who learned to live in the wild without forgetting that he had once been a housepet fed a steady diet of teddy bears.
When the men would return a year later, their friend would remember them, though another year in the wild would put him at another remove from his teddy bear days.
Eventually, the men would lose track of Christian. So it goes.
Christians early life and his rehabilitation to the wild made him a much filmed and photographed celebrity. He was the subject of a movie, documentary, news stories, and photographic essays. A Lion Called Christian first appeared in print in 1971; the 2009 version is not a reprint but a revision following the meteoric popularity of an archival film clip recounting the 1971 reunion of man and feline friend. YouTube created the platform for the book.
Christian finds his place in the wildnerness, but so do Bourke and Rendall. This book is a profound statement about the nature of love: it is not exclusively a human feeling or experience. It is also a profound statement about our place in nature: we have a place there if we have a heart for it.
1 comments:
The title of this post in your sidebar made hop here. I was transfixed by the youtube video of the reunion, mainly because of my hope in the paradise that God gave us, and how it was described in Isaiah 11:6-9 and other places in the bible.
The story is just so inspiring, as you say, and is a story of true love, friendship and loyalty. The boys were told that Christian would not remember them. George also apparently, based on his vast experience, told them (when they said on the way to Kenya that George had to stop to let Christian out for a wee) that if they stopped, they would lose Christian forever. That he would go off and they would be unable to catch him. They stopped, Christian wee-ed, they called him back and he jumped back into the landrover - no problem.
I never read the book. Thanks for the review. I might read it now.
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