Billy Connolly's Route 66_ The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip - Billy Connolly [112]
With about forty big cats, the sanctuary is extraordinarily expensive to run. It costs about half a million dollars a year just to keep the show on the road – not that surprising when you consider that the big cats gorge their way through four cows every week.
Quite a few of the tigers and lions had come to the sanctuary after unscrupulous photographers had abandoned them. Once they stopped being cute and fluffy at about six months old, they became surplus to requirements as far as the photographers were concerned.
‘Most of them end up in a canned hunt,’ said Jonathan, ‘where you can shoot them for a fee. It’s disgusting.’ Others had formerly been in zoos, mostly private ones. ‘That’s the only thing I have against zoos. Why do they keep breeding these animals? We all know why: everybody wants to come and see the cubs. But what happens to the cubs when they are full grown? They end up in facilities like this. Or, worse, they go to a canned hunt where the big brave hunter can shoot one.’
‘Where do they do that?’
‘All over the country. There are more than three hundred canned hunts in this country. It’s illegal, but they move from place to place. Sometimes they let hunters shoot them in the back of a horse trailer. It’s ridiculous.’
‘For the sheer joy of doing it? I just don’t get that.’
‘The trophy-hunting thing is just ridiculous. And there’s a couple of places in this country that actually breed lions for human consumption, to make lion hamburgers. Now, why would you want to do that? And they have licences! I would love to shut them down. Lions are now on the endangered species list.’
‘I’ve never seen it for sale.’
‘Some of them here in Arizona sell lion burgers for twenty-seven dollars a burger. They mix it with cow meat, but why would you?’
We moved on through the park, which had a total of about 175 animals in around forty compounds and enclosures. Jonathan introduced me to a cougar called Bam Bam that was more tame than most. ‘They’re wonderful cats,’ he said. ‘Great survivors. This cat can take down a horse, big prey. He is a little bit shy, but if you get him one on one, he’ll come and sit right in your lap. He’s just a real sweetheart. I’ve got other cougars I wouldn’t do that with, but this one is pretty safe.’
‘It’s astonishing that in America a thing like that’ – I pointed at the cougar – ‘is still roaming in the wild. There’s something quite nice about that.’
‘In Arizona there are about twenty-five thousand in the wild. In the southern part of Arizona there are some jaguars in the wild. They’ve spotted about six of them. They’ve come up from South America. People always wonder what they eat. I always tell them “slow natives”.’
Later, Jonathan took me into an enclosure that housed a lioness. Standing a foot behind Jonathan, I was quaking as he tried to entice her to come out from behind a rock. Oh my God, I thought. This will be the one day when she loses the plot and rips off someone’s face. But Jonathan got her out from her hiding place, put a leash on her – a leash – then sat her down and cuddled and kissed her.
‘Come on over and see her,’ he said.
Very gingerly, I approached. I sat down beside the lioness, as instructed by Jonathan, who was stroking her. When my heart had stopped beating out of my chest, I gave her a bit of a stroke. I’d never stroked a lion before. It was an amazing feeling.
We moved on to look at some beautiful wolves, then Jonathan showed me some of the ways in which people have mistreated the animals that are now in his care. One monkey couldn’t keep its tongue in its mouth because some bastard had removed its incisor teeth. The tongue was just hanging out, and the poor little thing was slobbering.
I thought it was wonderful that a man who had made his living from lions and tigers by making them disappear on stage had turned completely the other way and now devoted his life to their welfare. Jonathan should be celebrated and congratulated. It had been