Lions

Gigi was watching an animal documentary early this morning about the great cats. They showed this mother lion nursing her babies and I commented that baby lion’s fur is very wiry and they stink.

“How do you know that?” she said.

“Because I used to take a set of lions home and play with them,” I said.

“Huh?” Gigi responded.

I forget as a kid and teenager that I was honored to have a friend whose father was the curator of The NC Museum of Life and Science.

I spent countless coming into contact with lions, bears, monkeys, alligators, prairie dogs, birds, snakes, farm animals not to mention some national space treasures like an Apollo capsule, a lunar lander and an actual moon rock.

We would travel to Grandfather Mountain to exchange bears for breeding and get free reign to explore the mountain. It was and is a wonderful place.

You would think in 30 years I would have mentioned that I played with lion cubs as a kid.

By the way the monkeys stunk too. We had spider monkeys, capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys, a gibbon (ape), wooly monkeys (there were sweet), and stumped tail macaque monkeys. The macaques were the most aggressive and smelled all to be damned. The macaques had the most colorful butts too.

I never got close enough to the bears to smell them.

I’m big into smells.

1 comments:

Ali said...

No wonder the monkeys stank...they fling their own poo. He, He.