Slowly . . .
I’m always very wary when I receive an e-mail from someone who wants to come and work or volunteer with me and the message starts with something like this:
“Dear Kevin, I think I would be a perfect addition to your team because I have a natural affinity with animals. Some people say I have a gift and . . . ”
At that point I usually hit delete, or Mandy sends a polite, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It’s like someone telling you they’re a people person, and that they get on with everyone. Forming a relationship with another person—even a business relationship—takes time. The same goes with animals.
I’ve based a lot of how I work with animals on watching them, and learning how they behave. This goes for how I relate to individuals, as well as species. As a child I liked observing and keeping records about my pigeons and other birds and animals. I was watching and learning not just for the sake of learning, but because I wanted to work out how I could relate to my pets. It was never enough for me to just look at them.
It was the same with Tau and Napoleon, the young lions I met at the Lion Park when I first started visiting. I was allowed to enter the enclosure with them, so the interaction started with them from day one. Like any new relationship there was a bit of trepidation and some nerves. I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me. As I’ve said, in those early days I thought that what Tau and Napoleon wanted from me was a couple of pounds of meat off my lower legs, but I later worked out I was wrong.
Although Richard had given me the basic ground rules, about not crouching or sitting or bending over in front of the lions, or showing them my back, or running, or this and that, I was on my own for much of the time with Tau and Napoleon, so I was free to experiment and test some boundaries with them.
As I started to get more confident with Tau and Napoleon and understand more about how they behaved, I learned what was play and what wasn’t. Sometimes something I thought was quite serious was actually play, and vice versa. For example, some lions are very possessive. If Tau grabbed my jersey and growled, I wasn’t sure whether it was because he wanted to take it, or if he was just enjoying playing with it. I had to learn which actions and noises meant he was serious, and which meant he was having fun.
The way he looks, the way he acts, the way he behaves, the way he talks, the way his hair stands up or his tail flicks can all tell you something about what’s going through a lion’s mind. Behavior also needs to be taken into context. A lion locking eyes with you doesn’t mean he’s going to challenge you, although it can mean that he’s challenging you for possession of something. During filming I’ve stared at Tau confrontationally to try and make him growl at me, and while it works sometimes, at other times he knows it’s not for real and he calls my bluff.
To live and work with animals you have to get to know them, and understand that an individual’s behavior will change from time to time, in the same way that people change from day to day. I’ve known Maditau the lioness since she was a baby, and over the past nine years she’s raised several litters in my presence. She knows me well and she’s never been particularly possessive about her cubs, but her current litter is different. It could be because it’s probably going to be her last litter, but whatever the reason she doesn’t like anyone—not Tau or Napoleon (either of whom could be the father) or me—going near them. I think she thinks we’re going to eat her babies.
While Maditau has made it clear to me that she doesn’t want me approaching her cubs this time around, sometimes the cubs will come to me when I’m sitting in the enclosure with the rest of the pride. When I can, I spend two or three hours a day just lying around with my lions, snoozing in the midday heat or checking e-mails on my PDA. Cubs are curious and one time when they walked over to me, Maditau watched them like a hawk. She tolerated them approaching me and checking me out, and when they returned to her she looked at me and I looked back at her. She curled her lip and growled at me, so I looked away. When I looked back at her she growled again, so I knew that while she was putting up with me, she really didn’t want me in the enclosure near her babies this time around. I have to respect her wishes, so I got on all fours and slowly crawled away from her, the way another lion would if she was giving him the same signal. I didn’t stand up and back away, because that might have aggravated her even more—she might have construed standing as me challenging her. What she did and how I responded constituted normal behavior for lions, but other lion trainers and wranglers would probably have a heart attack if you told them to, one: be near a lioness’s cubs in the same enclosure; two: turn your back on a lion; three: get down on all fours in front of one; and, four: crawl away in the opposite direction with your back to her.
My lions aren’t used to me acting like a lion tamer or zookeeper would, they’re used to me acting like a lion.
There are plenty of so-called experts on lions in South Africa and I’ve heard a few interesting theories on how it is that I can do what I do with my lions. One of the most common theories is that my lions are so well fed that they would never consider eating me, or that they are declawed (Tsavo was the only declawed lion I’ve ever interacted with). Other theories are that I carry a concealed weapon or a shock stick, or that there is always another handler outside the enclosure armed with an AK-47 assault rifle who is there to step in when things go wrong. All of this is rubbish. Some people can’t understand that I can have a relationship with lions and that’s their prerogative. I’m not going to get upset if someone doesn’t believe me. If people want to believe that I need a cattle prod or gun-toting guard to work with my lions, then good for them.
There are some milestones in life that you never forget.
When I was visiting Tau and Napoleon in the early days, I used to go into the enclosure walking fully upright, like a human being—naturally. The lions would nip and bite at my ankles and legs and try to leap up on me, hooking their claws into my pants and shirts. Eventually they would tire of greeting me in this way and they would go and sit down. Even though I had been told not to sit down or crouch around the lions, I wanted to spend time with them and I couldn’t very well stand up for two or three hours. I could have gone to the far end of the enclosure and sat down and watched them from a distance, but that would have been the same as sitting outside the enclosure and I wanted to be closer. Eventually I decided to sit down about two meters away from Napoleon, as back then I thought I could trust him more than the clear-eyed Tau.
I remember sitting there one day, the warm sun on my back, just watching the pair of them and thinking to myself how lucky I was just to be there, sharing time with these two amazing, fast-growing cats. Napoleon got up. He was about fourteen months old by this stage so he was getting tall, with a grizzly fringe of hair under his chest that would later become his magnificent mane. He stretched and yawned, showing off his lengthening canines, and then started walking towards me.
Normally, when he stood up I would stand up, but this time I remember thinking, I wonder what would happen if I just sit here? Napoleon came closer, entering my space, and he just flopped down beside me. He wanted to be near me.
What I’ve found out about lions since then is that they love to touch. Even in the middle of the day in the heat of summer, you’ll see lions in the wild and captivity lying all over each other. They love it. These days, Tau, Napoleon, and I will often sleep in the grass together and they need to be touching me. If I roll over and break contact with one, I’ll feel a massive paw reaching blindly for me, or the twitch of a tail as it snaps over and lands across my leg. It’s so cute—I love it. If I have to get up, they’ll both wake up, looking at me as if to say, “What’s wrong Kev, why do we have to get up?”
I’m not into spiritual mumbo jumbo but I do believe that everyone, every person and every animal, has an aura—an energy around them. Sometimes we don’t like having our space invaded and at other times we do. Personally, I don’t like being crowded unless you’re my wife, my lion, my hyena, or my dog.
When Napoleon flopped down beside me that first time, I knew he had come into my space so I thought it was okay for me to do the same. I leaned over and put my arm on him and he did nothing at all. It was a memorable moment. The next time I sat next to him, I was confident enough to touch his paw and hold it. After that it was me tickling him on the belly then him interacting with me when I lay rather than sat, or crawled through the grass. I would still give the lions time to release their energy at the start of our sessions together, and try the experimental stuff once they had calmed down.
Sometimes the experimentation was unpredictable or scary, mostly because of what other people had told me not to do and the preconceptions they had drummed into my head. The first time Tau jumped on my back set my heart racing. I was crawling and he pounced and landed on top of me. He was a heavy boy. I waited to see what he would do, but he just lay there, hugging me. I was starting to realize that my inhibitions about these lions were simply in my mind. In the back of my mind was the guy saying, “Don’t trust the lion with the clear eyes.” These days I listen to my own senses and instincts, not the words of people.
Touching and playing and rolling around on the ground led to hugging, but I found things were always easier when I was down on the lions’ level. I wondered if the boisterous play at the start of each visit was not so much about them being excited and full of energy, but rather just them trying to pull me down to their level. The next time I entered their enclosure I did so on all fours, and then lay flat on the ground. When I was down in the grass on my belly, they didn’t jump on me because there was no need to—I was already at their level.
I started taking meat into the enclosure with me to feed Tau and Napoleon. Not knowing any different, I fed them from my hand. That, I soon learned, was a definite no-no in the world of lion handling. Meat should always be given to a lion from the tip of a stick, as a lot of people believe that a lion can’t tell the difference between the meat and your hand. As well as not crouching or crawling or lying around a lion, I wasn’t supposed to approach it head-on, or put my hands near its mouth. I let my lions drink water out of my cupped hands and that, like most things I do, is also forbidden in the world of lion-keeping. I’d already broken all these rules before I even knew they existed.
Rubbing heads with each other is a form of greeting for lions, so that’s what I started to do with my boys. Even though they are full-grown adults we still greet each other the same way. In the wild, lions also have to clean each other. After devouring a buffalo or wildebeest carcass in the bush, lions’ faces are covered in blood and gore. Like house cats, they rely on their siblings or parents to clean the parts of their face they can’t reach. My lions love to lick me, and while it’s an important part of the bonding process, it can also be quite painful.
A lion’s tongue is covered in scores of spiky papillae. A house cat’s tongue is the same, though in miniature. When feeding, this allows them to literally lick the skin from their prey, and to loosen the meat from the bones of the carcass. A few good licks from Tau and Napoleon on the same part of my arm will start to draw tiny beads of blood—it’s like rubbing fifty-grade sandpaper against your skin. They lick me because they want to groom me, and as I can’t return the same favor I carry a round plastic hairbrush with me with stiff but flexible plastic bristles. I comb them with it, particularly their faces and manes, not just to remove stray burrs and twigs, but to bond with them.
Later, my “unorthodox” methods started to come to the attention of people outside of the park, when we started filming commercials. When it was time for a break, I would have to take the lions back to their enclosure and call out, “Lions back in enclosure—safe!”
Instead, I would call out, “Lions and handler back in enclosure—safe!” Then I would lie down with my boys in the shade of a tree and have a sleep with them. One of my favorite positions with Napoleon is to lie down at right angles to him with my head on his belly and one of my arms on his forelegs and the other on his hind legs, as though he’s a big hairy armchair. He loves it, too.
What was becoming clear to more and more people as time progressed at the Lion Park was that I actually did know what I was doing, even if my methods seemed a bit unusual. Workers on the film and commercial sets started taking happy snaps of me with the lions so people began seeing what I was doing without knowing the full story of how I was doing it. This is probably what started to give rise to the stories about full-bellied and declawed lions, cattle prods and guys in the background with AK-47s.
I’m not on a one-man crusade to change the way people work with tame lions. While I believe, naturally, that my way of relating to predators is good for me and good for them, I cannot write a textbook for lion-keepers on how to form relationships with their animals. It doesn’t work that way.
I learned about animals slowly, over a number of years, and I’m still learning. As I’ve said, I love motorcycle racing, so I’ll use an analogy from that world. People have asked me how I learned or developed my methods. It’s the same as asking me how I was able to break the one-minute, fifty-second barrier for a lap around Johannesburg’s Kyalami racetrack on a motorcycle.
When I first got my bike, the best time I could do was two-minutes-twenty and I thought I was going to crash as I went into every single corner. Over several years I was able to reduce that time to one-minute-fifty. There are superbike schools that I could have gone to, but I already knew how to ride my bike. One-minute-fifty was a good time for a recreational racer like me, but I wanted to push the limit. I realized pretty early on that when I was trying very hard to better my time, it wasn’t happening, and I probably stood more chance of having an accident than when I was riding for fun and not really concentrating on what I was doing. Reducing my time from two-twenty to one-fifty happened over time, not overnight. I shaved half a second off my time here, a tenth of a second there, and little by little those savings added up.
I learned to do what I do with big animals the same way that I bettered my racing times—in increments. I started when they were young and it took us years to get to the place where we are now. A lion—any animal—will often allow you the opportunity to explore something.
Swimming is an example. One day I was walking in one of the open areas of the Lion Park with the lionesses Meg and Ami. Meg’s the athlete. Like Napoleon, she has oodles of confidence and will try almost anything, although don’t be fooled—she has an extremely sensitive side and can sulk for weeks. Then it’s up to you to figure out why! She knows she’s special and knows she holds a huge chunk of my heart, therefore gets away with murder because she tugs on my heart strings.
Ami is slighter than Meg and built in a more slender way. She’ll follow what Meg does more often than not, but always seems less boisterous and not as confident in her own abilities. Ami’s like that child who just needs a bit of reassurance every now and again.
It was summer, the grass was long and green, and we were passing a dam, filled to the brim and surrounded by thick reeds. I noticed that Meg was quite interested in the water and was padding around in the shallows, experimenting tentatively by splashing the water with her big paw. It was a warm day, and I thought, what the hell, I’ll get in the water and see what happens. I took off my sandals and waded in, wearing my cargo shorts and T-shirt. It might have been sunny, but the water was chilly. I carried on regardless, wading out into the middle, and once there I lowered my body fully into the water and started doing an imitation of what I thought a lion would look like swimming—kind of an exaggerated dog paddle.
“Come, Meggie. Do you want to swim, my girl? Wuh-ooow, wuh-ooow,” I called to her as I swam.
Meg looked at me, puzzled, as if to say, “Kev, what you doing there, boy?”
I kept calling and swimming and, one tentative step at time, Meg started to enter the water. She looked left and right and then walked in until her front legs were wet. She lunged away from the bank and swam out to me. Once she reached me she was relieved, but maybe a little nervous, too, as she clung to me like I was a human raft, with her big front paws up on my shoulders. I had some meat in the pocket of my cargo pants, so I fished some out and fed her from my hand while we swam. She loved it, and afterwards we sat on the grassy earthen wall of the dam together in the sunshine and dried ourselves off before continuing on with the walk.
I’ve also been told that lions hate water and that it’s virtually impossible to teach one to swim. I didn’t even try to teach my lioness to swim—she saw me doing it and decided she would try it, as well. Someone called out to me to be careful in the dam; they thought Meg would claw me to death when she swam over to me, with her paws slapping the surface of the water. We played and she climbed on my back, but she didn’t hurt me. Meg and Ami are a joy to work with because they don’t automatically bring their claws out when they paw you. In my experience maybe one in forty lions can play like that.
All we did on the day Meg went swimming was to explore an opportunity. With captive lions there are only so many opportunities to explore, so I believe Meg was enjoying trying something different.
I think of my lions as tame, but not trained. However, just because they are tame for me does not mean they won’t try and kill a stranger, and just because they’re not trained does not mean they won’t do what I ask them to do.
My lions respond to me the same way as my dog Valentino (named after my hero) does. If I call him, he comes for one of two reasons—because he wants food or attention. My lions respond to me for the same reasons, and because we have an established relationship.
Sometimes it doesn’t work out as planned. I received a request for two male lions to be filmed for a short sunset shot that was needed for a television commercial. It sounded simple, but if there is one thing I’ve learned in the world of film and television, it is that there is no such thing as simple. While the crew set up, I went to check on my boys. They had clearly been fighting the night before the shoot because as soon as I walked in, I saw Tau was limping. He had received a gash in his paw from his placid, chilled brother. Napoleon almost couldn’t wait to get up in the truck which was going to transport them to the more open, savannah-like area of the park for the filming. A cage was being erected around the film crew and everything was progressing except for the second lion. Tau was not keen on getting into the truck and for a while I thought I might have to call off the shoot.
In the end I took Napoleon out of the truck and Tau seemed a little more relaxed about going up to the back of it on his own. I fed him some meat and took my time with him. Another wrangler might have bullied him into getting into the truck, using a shock stick or cattle prod, but there was no way I would do something like that. The shoot was delayed for a couple of hours as a summer storm was brewing over Johannesburg. Ominous black clouds were rising like towers in the sky, obscuring the setting sun so the crew had to set up artificial lighting.
Tau got up into the truck and I gently closed the door on him. He’d done it of his own accord. Napoleon, of course, leapt in eagerly with his brother and we trundled off to the other side of the park. My boys behaved impeccably and the film crew got the thirty seconds they needed of two majestic, maned male lions looking out into the distance while the (artificial) golden light bathed their faces. At the end of the shoot, Napoleon obediently hopped back into the truck, but Tau decided he was going nowhere.
Tau is stubborn, but that’s one of the reasons I like him. He’s like me. We do things at our own pace, and of our own choosing. While the crew packed up their gear and Napoleon was driven home, I sat beside Tau, resting against him, as the light faded to darkness. His paw was probably still a bit sore and once he decided it was rested enough—when he was good and ready—we called it a night.
I am not advocating my way of working with lions to anyone else—it’s simply what works for me. I don’t think there is anything special about me. As I’ve already said, if I have a “gift” it is simply my ability to follow my sixth sense. My wife doesn’t think I’m anything special—she knows I am just an ordinary guy. I think it’s arrogant to say, as some people do, that they have a special way of working with animals or a special talent, and that no one can do what they do.
When I started interacting with Tau and Napoleon, it wasn’t because I hoped that one day they’d be able to star in television commercials or films, or that one day I would get the opportunity to make documentaries about wildlife and a feature film. I’m just pleased that people took an interest in my animals and the way I’ve worked with them. We’ve certainly all received a good deal of publicity. I’m pleased if people see one of my documentaries and it changes the way they perceive hyenas, not as scavenging vermin, but as intelligent, sociable animals. I’m pleased if someone sees me on television with Tau and Napoleon, and they learn that lions are sociable animals that can show love to each other—and me—and that they’re not the mindless, man-eating killers they’re sometimes made out to be.
The positive things about documentaries, film, and television is that it allows me to get out important messages about animals and conservation to many more people than I could if I was showing groups of tourists and South African schoolchildren through the Lion Park. I’m not the first person to say this, but as human beings we need a wake-up call to start getting serious about conservation and the environment. The number of lions in Africa has dropped from about 350,000 to between 23,000 and 25,000 in less than twenty years, so anything I can do to educate people about the importance of conserving these animals is worthwhile. In fifty years time there might be no lions.
I think the Australian conservationist and documentary-maker Steve Irwin was a great guy. He brought simple messages about conservation to a huge number of people around the world. What I particularly admired about Steve was that he put his money where his mouth was. Some other wildlife presenters are just TV personalities who don’t give a damn about the beaver or polar bear they’re talking about. Steve was different. He bought up large tracts of land to be set aside as wildlife areas. If I could buy up some land and convert it to a national park, I would do it, but I can’t. So I keep making the films and the documentaries. If all the filmmaking and television and publicity went away tomorrow, though, I wouldn’t shed a single tear for myself because it would give me more time to spend with my animal friends and my wife. I would shed a lot of tears, however, for the animals and the environment. They would be the ones losing out if the message of conservation couldn’t be spread any longer.
Often, when people ask me how I work with the animals, they usually want to know why I do what I do. It’s not for money. I didn’t start spending half my days at the Lion Park, or take a full-time job there, because the money was good or I thought that we might make a movie one day. I formed relationships with those animals and sometimes those relationships have allowed me to get my friends to work with me. In the early days I did what I did out of a sense of obligation. My job as the animal enrichment, or animal welfare officer, at the Lion Park was to make sure the lions and hyenas and other predators at the park had the best possible quality of life for enclosed animals. Part of my job was to provide them with stimulation, but what I quickly found was that this was a two-way street. I got as much, if not more, enjoyment from the burgeoning relationships I was forming with the animals as they did.
One day I approached the enclosure of another lion, Siam. I was surprised to see him by the fence and calling me. “Wuh-ooow, wuh-ooow,” he said to me.
“Hello, my boy. This is a surprise.” What was surprising for me about this little encounter was that Siam was sharing his area with a female and was mating. I’d always been told to stay away from mating lions, and that they would not want me near them. I went in and spent some time with Siam, rubbing his head against mine, grooming him, scratching him, and generally hanging out while his female companion lazed nearby. At the end of our time together, I said, “Thanks, Siam.” For what ever reason, he had invited me in. I got a huge kick out of that.
I’ve found that Napoleon is happy to have me around him when he’s mating, but other people who work with lions don’t believe me when I tell them about Siam and Napoleon. The funny thing is that even though he doesn’t mind me being there, Napoleon won’t let Tau near him when he’s mating. Tau won’t have any other male around him when he’s mating.
So where do I fit in—what’s my place in the lives of these animals, and how do they perceive me? The short answer is that I don’t know. Napoleon and I have a better relationship than Tau and I do when it comes to women. Don’t get me wrong, Tau and I have a good relationship, but he doesn’t trust me with his chicks. The human world’s the same; there are some of my friends I trust around my wife, and others I wouldn’t. Could the relationship between Tau and me sour one day to the point where he sinks his teeth into me and kills me? I don’t think so, but you can never say never. What drives one human to kill another? Women, possibly. Even if one of my lions killed me, I’m sure that, given the chance to live my life over again, I wouldn’t do a thing differently. I’ve learned so much from the various relationships in my life, including my animal relationships. I was defiant to the point of insolence earlier in my life, but in that respect I was probably like a two-or three-year-old lion, finding my way in the world and relishing any opportunity to challenge authority.
My relationships with lions and other animals have put me in very good stead for my relationships with people. When working with predators, you have to be more aware of behavior and behavioral patterns. I’ve found I’ve become more attuned to human body language, as well, able to determine if people are agitated, paying attention, or cross. With people, sometimes you don’t want to accept the behavior they’re exhibiting and so you might push some buttons to get a different response. You don’t do that with lions as you will get a response you really don’t want.
I’ve changed in the ten years I’ve known Tau and Napoleon. We’ve grown together and our relationship has changed. I don’t go in with them now because I feel sorry for them, because they live in an enclosure instead of the wild, and I think it’s my job to enrich their lives. If the truth be told, Tau and Napoleon have flipping good lives, for lions, and even for people, considering the conditions some humans have to endure in Africa. I spend time with my brothers Tau and Napoleon now because I want to, and because I get something out of it. I am part of their lives now and they are part of mine.
I miss them when I have to go away. In a way, it limits me, but not more than any other relationship with a close family member or a pet. I couldn’t leave them for six months, and even after three weeks away from them Mandy says I am like a bear with a sore head. I worry about what will happen to them if they outlive me, but I suppose that is a normal element of a family relationship. Who is to say what’s normal in any family?
So, will there be a Kevin Richardson text book on how to keep lions in captivity? The answer is a definite no.
I’m happy to share my rules for working around lions with people, but they’re mostly common sense. Rule one is don’t wake me when I’m sleeping. Rule two is don’t come near me when I’m eating (unless I’m feeding a lion from my hand, and I’m not advocating anyone try that, simply because it works for me). Rule three is don’t surprise me (make sure I know you’re coming closer), and rule four is when I tell you I’ve had enough of you, I mean it. Any lion keeper would say pretty much the same thing, but could I teach someone else to do what I do in the way that I do it?
I could teach someone how to ride a motorcycle, but I couldn’t teach them to do a lap of Kyalami in one minute, forty-nine seconds. You have to learn that for yourself, and the only way to learn how to go fast is to take it slow.