The Man Who Liked Lions
By JOHN BERNARD DALEY
Illustrated by ORBAN
A zoo is a place where some people make
sport of lower animals. That included Kemper,
but for him people were the lower animals!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity Science Fiction, October 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mr. Kemper leaned on the rail, watching the caged lions asleep in the August sun. At his side a woman lifted a whimpering little girl to her shoulder and said, "Stop that! Look at the lions!" Then she jiggled the girl up and down. The lion opened yellow eyes, lifted his head from between his paws and yawned. Immediately the girl put her fingers over her face and began to cry. "Shut up!" said the woman. "You shut up right now or I'll tell that big lion to eat you up!" Looking through her fingers the girl said, "Lions don't eat little girls." The woman shook her. "Of course they do! I said they did, didn't I?"
"Lions seldom eat people," said Mr. Kemper. With all of her two hundred pounds the woman turned to face him. "Well!" she said. The word hung like an icicle in the warm air, but Mr. Kemper waved it aside. "Only old lions resort to human flesh. Except for the famous incident of the Tsavo man-eaters, of course." The woman pulled her arm tighter around the girl, elbow up, as if to ward him off. "Come on, Shirl," she said. "Let's go look at the taggers." And with a warning look over her shoulder she lunged away from the rail. A big man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth took her place.