Free Part of the Pride by Kevin Richardson

in hunting and this is not just left to the females. I wondered what it would be like to get close enough to one of these huge beasts to run my hands through its long dark mane.
    In Camp One at the Lion Park visitors can drive their own vehicles on a road through the lions’ enclosure. At the time I first started visiting the park I was driving an Opel Kadett, a compact little car. I stopped to take a look at some lions lazing under a tree and a huge male got up and wandered slowly towards me through the yellow grass. I swallowed hard and felt my heart start to beat faster as he closed the distance between us. I don’t think I had truly realized just how big a lion was until that moment. His beautiful maned head was higher than the roof of my car and he looked down at me through the window.
    When he roared, the car vibrated. It was like the scene in themovie
Jurassic Park
where the Tyrannosaurus Rex is breathing on the people in the four-by-four. It was awesome, in the truest sense of the word.
    After about a month of my visiting the park on a regular basis, Richard let me go into the enclosure with Napoleon and his clear-eyed brother alone. When I walked in through the gate by myself I thought those two lion cubs were going to kill me. The still-unnamed one was feisty. He would stare at me with his piercing, pitiless eyes and then launch himself at me, biting and mauling me with his claws and paws, which were already the size of saucers. I thought, “Shit, this thing wants to chow me!” Now I know that rather than wanting to eat me, he was simply playing.
    If this was play, though, it was roughhouse stuff. When the clear-eyed one locked his jaws on my hand and started biting down with those needle-like teeth of his, it felt like he was going to rip my hand off. I think my attitude towards these two lions was that as much as I loved seeing them and being with them, I didn’t want to impose on them. I felt I simply had to wait, and grin and bear their ripping and biting until they tired of it.
    â€œShit, Richard, is this safe?” I asked him one day as I inspected a fresh set of scratches and my ripped shirt. I had started buying my shirts from the Mr. Price discount shop by this stage, as I was going through about one a week.
    â€œI don’t know, Kev,” he said.
    â€œGreat,” I thought, “and you’re the expert. Just great.” Richard was probably no more expert in the keeping of captive lions than I was at that time.
    Richard kept going into the enclosure with the two young lions so I, as someone who can never resist a challenge, kept going in, as well. I have to admit that I was a little concerned, as despite what some of my friends and family say, I don’t really have a death wish.
    â€œYou’d better give that one with the clear eyes a name,” Richard said to me one day as I inspected the rips in my latest cheap shirt. I’d gone through a brief phase of wearing overalls when I was with the lions, but it had been too hot so I’d resigned myself to more trips to Mr. Price.
    I wasn’t sure if he was serious about naming the lion, so I ran it past Rodney during his next session at the gym. Rodney was clearly pleased that I was enjoying spending time with the lions, but as the cats did, in fact, belong to him, I asked for his permission. He told me it would be his pleasure for me to name the lion.
    I didn’t want to name him something corny, like Savuti or Serengeti. After many hours of thought I came up with the name Tau, which means lion in the Tswana language. Clearly, I was getting a little more sophisticated than the days when I named my frog. I thought it was a good, strong, original name, and I was proud. Only later did I learn that practically every second safari lodge and camp in southern Africa has the word Tau in its name.
    Rodney mentioned to me during a session in the gym that too many of his senior staff at Supermart were unfit,