First Saturday Green 101: And so they went to the big cat preserve

By motomynd

It was a quiet holiday weekend in Central North Carolina. With her daughter away at an anime convention, and both looking for something—anything—to get her son away from his computer game addiction, husband and wife talked strategy.
    “How about a movie?” she asked. His look must have said more than he realized. She answered her own question: “Right. Neither of you could sit through that.”
    “How about a hike?” he asked. Her look must have said more than she realized. He immediately followed with, “Yeah, he’ll be whining the whole time.”
    And so it went: Another race at the local country speedway? “No, he thought it was too loud last time you took him.” A baseball game? B-O-R-I-N-G. The zoo? Well, the North Carolina Zoo was formerly called a zoological park, and it was a fairly decent and spacious place, compared to a typical zoo. It was also a long drive—and if temperatures were in the high 90s as forecast, it would be like being cooked alive.
    “We have been meaning to check out that big cat place,” she said. “Let’s do an evening tour there. It would be cooler. And it might be good for you to be around lions again.”
    Semi-tame lions, and other once-wild cats, in fenced enclosures: the thought darkened his brain. The last time he was around a lion, it wasn’t in a fenced enclosure. It was a time and place when neither he nor the lion were tame. That thought brightened his brain.

He was in Kenya, with two heavy-maned male lions lying atop a bank and just far enough behind a small bush that his driver couldn’t maneuver the Land Rover for a perfect photo. After a brief discussion, the driver gave him permission to break the rules and get out of the truck, but only if he left the door open and was ready to jump in at the first sign of trouble. The lions were 40 feet away, lying still in the late-afternoon heat. He gently opened the door, slid slowly through the opening, and moved to the right rear fender of the Land Rover. One lion watched him casually between yawns. The other dozed with slits for eyes.
    Easing to the right to get clear photos past the bush put him at the rear bumper of the truck. He idly wondered what might happen if he stepped outside the profile of the vehicle, and the lions could tell he was on foot in their realm. They were so sleepy he dismissed the concern. With the lens pre-focused and the exposure set, he stepped right and snapped the shutter.

There was a rustle of movement and he instinctively snapped the shutter again. He heard his driver yell, and when the mirror dropped and the lens opened a split-second later, he was surprised to see in the camera’s viewfinder a lion in mid-air and out of focus, because it was now less than 20 feet away.
    In baseball, it is the step back that enables an outfielder to charge in and pluck a ball off his shoe laces that would otherwise drop for a base hit. At full stride in the open field with a football tucked tightly under the arm, it is the head fake and juke to the right that sets up ducking left, away from a would-be tackler. When a lion is in mid-leap and incoming like a missile, it is the step to the right that sets up the desperate lunge for the door to the left. As he broke for that open door, which now seemed yards instead of feet away, he felt the lion sweep past. It had fallen for the head fake.
    The Land Rover vibrated as the lion’s right front shoulder caught the right rear fender. It let out a roar, wheeled, and came after him. He dove through the open door, spun to pull it shut, and was surprised to see the lion’s head halfway in the truck and its shoulders between his hand and the door handle. Skittering backward crablike to the far side of the seat, he grabbed the camera mounted with the 600mm telephoto. It was a long-range lens and useless for photos at a distance of three feet, but it was big and bulky. He held it between himself and the lion and stared wide-eyed into those wild eyes until they blinked. The lion slowly backed out of the vehicle and sat down less than five feet away.
    He grabbed the other camera, the one with the shorter lens, reached just far enough to snatch the door shut, and started taking photos.

He spent several minutes that way, alternating taking photos and talking to the lion through the open window. He had never been more excited, or more alive. Kayaking in the midst of a pod of humpback whales had been his epic moment to date, but this was more. It was an hour later and a couple of miles away, when he got out of the truck to sit on the hood and drink hot tea and eat hardtack biscuits, that he realized his knees were numb and his hands shaky. “That was close,” his driver said. “Yes. Yes it was,” he answered, still fired with adrenaline and quivering with excitement. Brittle biscuits and muddy tea never tasted so great.

Maybe another little taste of that would be a good thing. And so that Saturday evening they went to the big cat preserve.
    For a private operation set in rural North Carolina, The Conservators’ Center is an amazing effort. It educates people as it entertains them, and while the rescued animals that live here may not have expanses of open terrain to wander, they do have adequate space and are at least very much alive and well cared for. They all act very content and happy; there is none of the nervous pacing that afflicts so many wild animals living in captivity. Among the featured creatures are lions, tigers, wolves, binturongs, lemurs, a leopard, and many smaller wild cats that most people have never even heard of, much less seen.
    For a man who saw big cats take down prey in the Serengeti, and was almost taken down by one in Kenya, the setting is still enticing, even if it lacks the wild-edged feeling of sharing the back seat of a Land Rover with a huge male lion. For a young wife who wasn’t yet on the scene for the Africa trips, and who abhors the cramped quarters most animals endure in typical zoos, the center is a wondrous place. For a teenage boy who would otherwise be blasting at digital adversaries on a computer screen, it is an adventure game brought to life. He clicks photo after photo and hangs on every word as the guide talks about the different species in residence.

One of the conservators guides plays with a male lion through the stout fence

At one of the large lion enclosures, the guide recruits other employees to help him “huff” in the hope the lions will react.


They respond theatrically. Wife and son hug excitedly. The man feels the same cold wind at the back of his neck as he did that memorable night in the Serengeti. He was lying in a small backpack tent, listening to huffing and footfalls all around as a large pride of lions walked through his campsite. They played around the tent for nearly an hour, calling as they circled, announcing their superiority over the situation. The man needed no convincing then, or now. The smallest of the Serengeti lions was twice his size, as were these semi-tame big cats. In the Serengeti there were no weapons; his fate was in the claws, teeth, and mood of the cats. Here there was tall, stout fence, and he eyed it appraisingly, wondering what would happen if several lions tried to go up it at once.
    That night in the Serengeti he came to peace with the idea that nothing would happen, but if it did, what a fantastically primordial way to go. Not in the way of his Scottish or Viking immediate ancestors, but in the manner of his ancients, millions of years ago.
    This night he noted the slightly paunchy build of the semi-tame and knew they had no interest in taking on a stout fence. Yet he still felt that cool breeze at the back of his neck the rest of the tour, and even much later, as he lay in bed. And he savored it same as he did the excitedly sleepless night after the morning he and a lion briefly shared the back seat of a Land Rover.
    As was so often the case, his wife was right—it was good to be around lions again. Everyone should do that every now and then.
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Copyright © 2013 by motomynd

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