Christian …………… the lion

First let tell you all why I decided to write this blog. One day I found a video in Yahoo of a lion and two men. The video was so moving and heart touching I could not resist myself from finding out more about that video and the history of it. And this blog is result of the research I did on that video after that. This entire happening symbolizes the bonding between men and animals.

One request to all my blog visitors , if you don’t have time to read the entire thing, don’t read, but please don’t miss the video ……. …. … ……….

This is about a lion named Christian, a zoo born lion exported to England for sale and two Australians living in the hip Chelsea section of London bought it. According to published reports, a friend came back from a trip to Harrods and told them that you could buy exotic animals there.

The two friends went there out of curiosity and spotted a 35-pound lion cub in a small cage. The cub had been born in a zoo and sold to the department store, which wasn’t considered that unusual back then.

Bourke and Rendall felt sorry for the cub and bought it for £250 ( US $600 then ) in 1969. The store was glad to be rid of it, as the cub had broken out of its cage one night and wreaked havoc on a display of imported goatskin rugs.

                   ( At home in John Rendall's Chelsea flat )

The two young men kept the lion cub, which they named Christian, in their living room. They became local celebrities of sorts, parading around Londonwith him, taking him to restaurants and even playing soccer with him.

                                            ( Christian enjoyed living in swinging London )

According to Jennifer Mary Taylor, who worked with Bourke and Rendall remembered “Christian used to lie beside me while I did the accounts at weekends. And every so often, if I'd ignored him for too long, he'd sock me across the head with one of his great big paws. He was very loving and affectionate - he liked to stand and put his paws on your shoulders. But he was………………….I mean, he was a lion. Does that sound silly?"

                                     ( Christian, rummaging through the drawers )

Christian the lion ( named by someone with a Biblical sense of humour ) arrived in Chelsea at a time when the King's Road - home to Mick Jagger - was the very heart of the Swinging Sixties. For a year, the Big Cat was part of it all, cruising the streets in the back of a Bentley, popping in for lunch at Casserole, a local restaurant, even posing for a Biba fashion advert.

"He was a lot of work," according to Rendall, "It took all four of us - me, my then girlfriend Jennifer Mary, Ace Berg and an actress called Unity Jones - to look after him. He also ate a lot, four meals (two liquid, two solid) plus supplements every day, which cost about £30 a week - a lot of money back then. And he had a very good sense of humour. ……… Sometimes, he'd see people staring at him through the back window of the car, keep very still on purpose - and then, just when they were convinced he was a stuffed toy, he would very slowly turn his head and freak them out."

But as the 35-pound cub grew to 185 pounds and food bills became astronomical, they knew he would have to be released to a less urban habitat. So they arranged to take him to a wildlife refuge in Kenya. They contacted George Adamson for help regarding this.

"I think George Adamson got quite a shock when he met us," said Rendall. "Straight from the King's Road, in all our gear - flares from Granny Takes A Trip, and with hair everywhere. We looked rather different from everyone else in Nairobi. But then so did Christian. He'd come from winter in England, so had a very thick coat - he was almost as hairy as we were."

                               ( Christian ............ in Rendall's furniture shop)

                                    ( Christian with George Adamson )

Adamson introduced Christian to an older lion 'Boy' and subsequently to a female cub Katiana in order to form the nucleus of a new pride. The pride suffered many setbacks: Katiana was possibly devoured by crocodiles at a watering hole, another female was killed by wild lions, and Boy was injured, afterwards losing his ability to socialize with other lions and humans, and was shot through the heart by Adamson after fatally wounding a man. These events left Christian as the sole surviving member of the original pride.

Adamson continued his work, and over the course of a year the pride established itself in the region around Kora, with Christian as the head of the pride started by Boy.

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), they travelled to Kenya to visit Christian and were filmed in the documentary Christian, The Lion at World's End. According to the documentary, Adamson advised Rendall and Bourke that Christian may not remember them. The film shows the lion at first cautiously approach and then quickly leap gently onto the two men, standing on his hind legs and wrapping his front legs around their shoulders, nuzzling their faces. The documentary also shows the female lions, Mona and Lisa, and a foster cub named Supercub welcoming the two men.Here is the famous video.....

Rendall details a final, un-filmed reunion that occurred ( reported in some newspaper articles to have been in 1974, and by George Adamson to have been in 1973 ). This reunion occurred without Bourke, and 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. And that was the last time Christian was seen alive ……. Though the no further details was found about Christina afterwards it is believed that he lived for a few more years after he was last seen.