Cat Video of the Week: Whack-A-Mouse
Cat video of the week: 'Lion cub hugs'
This one's almost too cute to be true. The video below is a variation on an odd story that's been circulating for a while on YouTube and seems to be rearing its head lately.
The simplest version goes like this: Two guys adopted a lion cub in the 1970s. Eventually "the authorities" informed them they couldn't have a full-grown lion as a pet. Fair enough. So they took it to an African wildlife sanctuary.
Later these hippies went to visit the lion. When they finally found it on the sanctuary, not only did it remember its two (human, male) mothers, but the lion jumped up to give them giant, dangerous-looking hugs. See here:
I was just about to declare an all-out hoax hunt on this video — which includes iffy-looking photos of the lion cub sitting a couch, plus a perfectly vague and unbelievable back story (as in, who are/were these guys? Why did they have a baby lion? Why are we hearing about this now?) — when I found an article in the Daily Mail: "Christian, the lion who lived in my London living room." According to the detailed piece, it's all true. The two well-heeled British dudes picked up "Christian" from a department store:
Harrods, it turned out, was also quite keen to be rid of Christian, who had escaped one night, sneaked into the neighbouring carpet department — then in the throes of a sale of goatskin rugs — and wreaked havoc.
The store, which had acquired the cub from Ilfracombe zoo, happily agreed to part with him for 250 guineas. So began Christian's year as an urban lion.
Later the pair ran into some actors who'd been in a movie about naturalist George Adamson, who himself raised and rehabilitated wild lions. The actors put the dudes in touch with Adamson, who in turn helped them get Christian to the wildlife preserve. There's a lot more to this strange story, too. Can't debunk it because it's true, so mark this one "bunked."
