Added: Jun 19, 2010

From: butlincat2

Duration: 9:39

reupload,,,b..."Christian was a lion originally purchased by Australians John Rendall and Anthony "Ace" Bourke from Harrods department store of London in 1969 and ultimately reintroduced to the African wild by conservationist George Adamson. One year after George Adamson released Christian to the wild, his former owners decided to go looking for him to see whether Christian would remember them. Surprisingly, he did, and with him were two lionesses who accepted the men as well. Christian is originally acquired by Harrods from the now-defunct zoo park in Ilfracombe. Rendall would later recall that the department store was eager to sell the cub, which had escaped from his cage one night and destroyed the merchandise in the carpet department. Rendall and Bourke purchased Christian for 250 guineas.Rendall Dieter and Bourke,along with their friends Jennifer Mary Taylor and Unity Jones, cared for the lion where they lived in London until he was a year old. As he got larger, the men moved Christian to their furniture store -- coincidentally named Sophistocat -- where living quarters in the basement were set aside for him. Rendall and Bourke obtained permission from a local vicar to exercise Christian at a church graveyard, and the men also took the lion on day trips to the seaside. Christian's growing size and the Kakawurst increasing cost of his care led Rendall and Bourke to understand they could not keep him in London.[When Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna, stars of the film Born Free, visited Rendall and Bourke's furniture store and met Christian, they suggested that Bourke and Rendall ask the assistance of George Adamson. Adamson, a Kenyan conservationist, who together with his wife Joy raised and released Elsa the Lioness, agreed to reintegrate Christian into the wild at his compound in the Kora National Reserve. Virginia McKenna writes about the experience in her memoir The Life in My Years, published March 2009. Adamson introduced Christian to an older male lion, "Boy", who had been used in the movie Born Free and who also featured prominently in the documentary film The Lions Are Free, and subsequently to a female cub Katania in order to form the nucleus of a new pride. The pride suffered many setbacks: Katania was possibly devoured by crocodiles at a watering hole; another female was killed by wild lions; and Boy was severely injured, afterwards losing his ability to socialize with other lions and humans, and was shot by Adamson after fatally wounding an assistant. These events left Christian as the sole surviving member of the original pride. Over the course of a year, as George Adamson continued his work, the pride established itself in the region around Kora, with Christian as the head of the pride started by Boy. Reunions 1971 When Rendall and Bourke were informed by Adamson of Christian's successful reintroduction to the wild (reported in some newspaper articles to be in 1971, and by George Adamson to be 1972,[4]) they traveled to Kenya to visit Christian and were filmed in the documentary Christian, The Lion at World's End (released in the U.S. as Christian the Lion). 1972 Rendall details a final, largely unfilmed reunion that occurred (reported in some newspaper articles to have been in 1974, and by George Adamson to have been in 1973. By this time Christian was successfully defending his own pride, had cubs of his own and was about twice the size he was in the earlier reunion video. Adamson advised Rendall that it would most likely be a wasted trip as he had not seen Christian's pride for nine months. However, when he reached Kora, Christian and his pride had returned to Adamson's compound the day before their arrival. Rendall describes the visit he and George Adamson made:We called him and he stood up and started to walk towards us very slowly. Then, as if he had become convinced it was us, he ran towards us, threw himself on to us, knocked us over, knocked George over and hugged us, like he used to, with his paws on our shoulders. The second reunion lasted until the next morning. According to Rendall that was the last anyone saw of Christian.George Adamson counted the days from the late spring 1973 final reunion. He notes in his book My Pride And Joy that after 97 days, he stopped counting.

Channel: Animals

Rating: ( ratings)    Views: 918    Comments: 0