Family, food and sex: my week as a lion

Monday

It was dusk. I was hungry. We all were. So, being alpha female – you’ll understand what a boss is, I’m sure – I walked around our pride, 11 of us (one sister absent on stud duty) and woke them all up. I gave a special licky-lovey-greeting to the two Bad Boys. My sons, you know. You know about family love? Then I led the whole lot to the place where I’d seen two old buffaloes and we killed one of them and shared a banquet and it was great. Still with me?

Tuesday

I lay digesting, plenty of buff still left for fourth helpings, and reviewed the hunt. I’d set it up: blockers either side, chasers behind, catchers in front. How quick was Bad Boy One to pick out and concentrate on the slower buffalo? Parental pride, eh? He drove that buff straight into the claws of a couple of aunties: one pulled it down, the other got the smother-bite locked on and that was that. My team did that. I take pride in my pride.

Wednesday

So there we all were in the shade of a fig tree, round-bellied, sleepy, all of us together in a great big furry heap, every lion touching at least two others. Warm, comfortable and full: would you understand if I were to suggest to you that God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world?

Thursday

My sister was back. She’d been honeymooning with Old Scarface. Our pride male. She was a bit dreamy eyed: they’d been at it for two days. We’ve all been there. He’s getting old, she said. He could only do it 156 times.

Friday

Not too old, I hope. He’s a mean old bastard but anything’s better than change. A pride is about females: sisters, cousins, mothers, daughters, aunties. The Bad Boys, their manes are starting, they look as if they need a shave and soon enough Scarface will find them sniffing round the back end of a cousin and he’ll kick them out to make their own way in the world.

Saturday

We’re a female workers’ cooperative with me as chief decision-maker. Old Scarface is just a perambulating sperm bank. But if a new male forces him out, the first thing the new boy will do is kill all the cubs. He wants cubs of his own. So we’re a conservative lot. That too is in our nature. Food, comfort, safety, friendship, family, stability, adventure, company, parental love, sex – if you’re capable of understand ing those ideas, you’re a smarter mammal than Wittgenstein.

Lifespan A dozen years

Eating habits Banquets

Hobbies Teamwork, contemplation

Sexual preferences 157 times in two days is about right