Remember when the video of an adolescent lion "hugging" two men went viral in like 2008? Well, this is the entire backstory as written by the them.
Around Christmas in 1969, friends Ace and John quite impulsively decide to buy a lion cub from Harrods and raise it in the furniture store below their apartment. The cub, Christian, wins over the many hearts of the customers. But as he gets bigger, Ace and John realize that they can't keep him any longer. Joined by famous lion "re-wilder" George Adamson, they set up a project to allow Christian to return to his ancestral land of Kenya and hopefully allow him to live there in the wild.
It's definitely an emotional story. With how we view treatment of exotic pets and wildlife nowadays, of course there's a million red flags in here, however the authors actively acknowledge that they really shouldn't have adopted him in the first place and condemn the exotic pet trade. The sixties and early seventies were a very different time; exotic pets where everywhere in London at the time, and laws protecting wildlife weren't as strict.
The story of Christian is overall inspiring to read, though I do have a few questions here and there. I definitely admire how Ace and John outright refuse to sell Christian to a zoo (which weren't of the quality they are nowadays back then) or similar place. However, I also wonder if he really was able to live a successful life in Kenya.
How Christian's story in Kenya went is basically like this: he got introduced to two different lions there in a park maintained by Adamson, who interacted with the lions and looked after them. These two lions eventually ended up passing, however, leaving Christian the sole male in the pride as new females were introduced. He grows older and has two more reunions with Ace and John as they visit him twice from England. After that, he starts to vanish from Adamson's terrain for longer and longer times (he can just leave when he wants to into the adjacent reserve), until finally, when he is about three years old, just vanished altogether and was never seen again, probably going into the reserve permanently.
This is all very inspiring, at least partially. I'm very glad that Christian was actually allowed to roam freely on a safe terrain in Africa rather than be stuck in a small furniture store in a busy city or a zoo enclosure. But at the same time I also wonder...is re-wilding him really the best option? The project's goal is admirable, but we have got to keep in mind that Christian is a lion who is now accustomed to humans (meaning he's more likely to pose a threat to them as he has no fear of them like wild-born lions) and also grew up at the most important stages of his life without any contact with other lions, possibly resulting in him not being able to connect with his own kind very well.
He does get to socialize with them at Adamson's terrain later, but he's already around a year old at that point. He spend his entire cubhood with two men who, granted, did love him. But I can't imagine it's good for his emotional development to grow up without any contact with any other lions in the most vital stages of his cubhood. And even when he does have his "pride" at Adamson's terrain, it's not a naturally-formed one, but rather an artificial one that only exists because Adamson gathers some lions he wants to re-wild and puts them together. And said pride breaks apart. At first, the first two lions (named Katania and Boy) die due to various circumstances. Then the later-introduced lionesses do spend some time with Christian, but ultimately choose to join other prides or mate with other males than Christian. So he was pretty much alone by the time he was last seen.
And then of course there's the question of if he can even hunt at all. Practicing on toys and targets only gets so much done. It's never once brought up in the book if he's capable of hunting or not, only that he played using toys. So what if he just died of starvation after he left Adamson's terrain for the reserve where he's free?
Ultimately, we don't know. Christian's fate is unknown as he hasn't been sighted after he left Adamson's reserve. I just hope he managed to live a long and happy life, but part of me does wonder if he really can because he simply missed out on all the quintessential things of being a lion at such a vital stage of his life. No hunting, no contact with other lions until he was already a young-adult, and he's accustomed to humans meaning he can pose a threat to them much easier (the lion Boy, one of Christian's early companions, actually ended up killing one of Adamson's assistants and had to be put down because of this). So maybe putting Christian in a zoo where it was certain he would be able to live our his life safely, albeit not in the ideal circumstances, would've ultimately the better option. Ah well, thing is we simply don't know what became of him.
So a good book, but also a slightly questionable one in terms of how it resolved. I wish it could've touched more on how exactly Christian was taught to live in the wild, such as getting him to hunt. I did like reading about it, though. Moral of the story: don't participate in the exotic pet trade.
Rating: 3.5/5
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