My husband and I have always thought this was a funny picture of him, very 70s, very huh? When I posted it on Facebook, where the photo on the screen was larger than the original Polaroid, I finally really looked at the lion. Here was this a wild animal lying on his side like an overgrown house cat, napping while a seven-year-old boy straddled him. This was not a full leonine life. Even lions in zoos get to pretend they are wild occasionally, get to roar and faux-stalk the sunscreen-scented tourists.

Then the comments for the picture started coming in. They were variations on worry, about putting one's child on an actual living lion, no matter how moribund and perhaps drugged (and most likely toothless) the big cat was, with a chilling mention of Dave Egger's novel What is the What: An Autobiography of Valentino Achek Deng. Deng was one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan, one of countless children separated from their families or even orphaned, "beset by starvation, thirst, and man-eating lions on their march to squalid refugee camps in Ethiopia" (Publisher's Weekly review as quoted on amazon.com).

In a few hours, the picture had totally changed for me.

But I still feel bad for the lion.



For the k.d. lang version of What's New, Pussycat?, click here.

Image: Mr. T at Magic Mountain, 25 February 1973.

Tags: drugged lion, boy sitting on lion, Magic Mountain in the 1970s