Years ago, Sunbeam mowers had an advertising campaign “Sic a lion on your lawn”. My uncle was a Sunbeam dealer in a small town, and eventually an 8 month old lion cub appeared in his store. I was unaware of its arrival, and, being a typical kid, was wandering through the store when suddenly the lion cub grabbed my ankle with its claws and sunk its teeth into my heel. Its teeth and claws were like needles, I yelled and jumped and my uncle laughed and laughed, because he’d seen the cub do that repeatedly.
At night the cub went home with him, so when they arrived my cousin and I were watching as the cub was put into his pen, which surrounded a tree in their backyard. Being kids, we wondered what the family dog would think of the lion, so we called the dog, picked it up and set it inside the pen. The dog saw the cub, the cub saw the dog and made a tiny roar, the dog immediately jumped over the fencing and went inside, leaving the cub bewildered and our experiment unfulfilled.
Next we saw one of the house cats, so it got dropped inside the pen. The cub saw the cat, the cat saw the cub, the cub made its tiny roaring sound again, the cat immediately climbed to the top of the tree leaving the cub on the ground looking pretty bewildered.
So much for our experiment.
