A long time ago in a place not far from here a man found a lion cub, abandoned by its mother. He captured it and kept it in a large pit.
The lion now lived in this enclosed space, from which it thought it couldn’t escape. " I have always been here this must be my home,' thought the lion. Every day the captor of the lion would come and feed it. He had trained it whilst a cub to eat the food from off his hand, and this amazing spectacle provided a means of livelihood for him as people would come and watch how a man could tame a wild beast.
As the lion cub got larger it became stronger and fiercer, as lions do. It would stride up and down the pit growling and roaring at the people who had to come to watch it being fed. It would threaten them swaying its head from side to side letting his magnificent mane fly in the wind, and would open its mouth and roar so loudly that some people would shake in fear and hide behind whatever protection that was nearby.
The lion began to have a false sense of its own importance and power. “ Look how people hide from me and hold their hands to their ears when I open my mouth. I have ability to make people do what I want,” it thought.
‘The lion noticed that the captor came at certain times of the day to feed him and that the man was confident that he the lion would do him no harm. “I’ll test my power over that man,” mused the lion. “Next time he comes to feed me, I’ll make him scared of me so that I will have power over him.”
So, the next day when the captor put his hand out with chunks of food on it the lion carefully let its teeth scrape over the man’s fingers. “Oh” shouted the man. “Today you have scratched me with your teeth. What do you think you are up to? My feeding you with people watching is my way of earning enough money to feed us both.
The lion was well pleased with its self. “ Th e man was frightened of me. I now know that I am who I am a true lion, strong and powerful.
Over the next few weeks the lion at feeding time touched the man’s fingers with its teeth a little more, so that the man’s hand had some blood on it.
The lions confidence in what it could do excelled. It awaited the captors arrival not so much for the food but for the additional pleasure of demonstrating its power over him and then hearing the gasps from the crowd of watching people.
Then, on a day the lion would remember for the rest of its life, it bit the mans hand hard so that the man could no longer use it. The man had screamed in pain and fainted, blood pouring from the terrible wounds. Watching people had rescued him for he would have died through loss of blood.
The man never came back to the place and he told people who wanted to shoot the lion for what it had done to him, “Leave it. Let it fend for itself. After all hasn’t this wild animal shown us his intelligence and power,” said the man.
So the lion still relishing the thoughts of his marvellous show of strength against his captor, began to get hungry, for the food never came as it had done over the years.
“Where is that dam, man with my dinner,” screamed and roared the lion. But there was no-one to listen . All the lion had now was himself
Days went by and then weeks and the lion once strutting and confident lay listless on the ground, its mane brushing over the gravel. It hadn’t eaten since that fateful last dinner.
By now the lion barely alive surviving on ants and rainwater had lost all its teeth, and its claws had fallen out through lack of use and the lion spent most of the day sprawled out like a rug on the floor of its home. It was about to say farewell to life when it noticed for the first time that there was a path up from the pit where he lived, with a gate at the end where presumably the captor had first brought him in by when he was a cub. And the gate was open. Slithering an inch at a time the lion somehow got up the path and out from the gate. And there outside it was a box filled with now rotten food. “This must have been where the captor kept the food to feed me.” Thought the lion as it struggled to get its tongue into the box to eat what was there.
Thus replenished a bit the lion managed to stand, its legs shaking like reeds in the wind and tottered off.
The now clawless, toothless lion set off slowly, swaying its mane in the air and then it let out a roar to show off to the world what a powerful beast it still was.
(C) Myrna Shoa
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