Throwback Thursday: The Right Way to Shoot Lions

If you want to shoot a lion, shoot him with your camera. That’s what I did when I visited South Africa’s Thornybush Game Lodge in 2013. Look at this handsome fellow with the huge balls and silky mane!

This is a South African lion. It is NOT Cecil of Zimbabwe.

This dude’s hair was so on fleek. I mean, he was on fleek a full year before the term “on fleek” was popularized by Peaches Monroee. This lion saw me looking at him, so he turned his head so I could get his good side. His lady friends couldn’t compete and didn’t even try.

“We do all the work around here, so we don’t have time to mess with our hair.”

Also not trying was this lazy-ass leopard cub.

“Sooooo tired.”

Our guides told us this young fellow was hanging out — literally — till his mom came back with something to eat.

We saw all kinds of fantastic animals in South Africa: elephants …

… hippos …

… zebras …

… giraffes …

… antelope and warthogs …

… rhinos …

… buffalo …

and the extremely rare swimming monkey.

After seeing all these animals in their natural habitat, I said to MrB, “I can’t ever visit a zoo again.” (Except the Singapore Zoo because of the awesomely delinquent tapirs there.) It definitely didn’t occur to me to shoot any one of these creatures with a bow and arrow or a bullet in order to hang its head in my living room. I do eat meat and wear leather, so it’s not like I can (a) complain about people hunting for food/clothing or (b) marry Paul McCartney.  But killing an animal for the bragging rights and a stuffed head? C’mon, man! The American dentist who killed Zimbabwe’s Cecil the lion is going to be regretting this for the rest of his life, I hope.

For my Maneater ring series, I’ve created designs that show an animal standing triumphant over its human counterpart. One of the rings is the Lion and the Hunter.

Click to see on my website.

Maybe I need to redo the face of the hunter (hidden inside the ring) to look like lion-killer Walter Palmer. SMH. The crazy thing is that when I created this piece in 2013, I thought lion hunting was a thing of the past — a hobby for Teddy Roosevelt, not for random guys from Minnesota. Little did I know.