Walk like lion, talk like pigeons

“Always be fearless. Walk like lion, talk like pigeons, live like elephants and love like an infant child.” ― Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday

In the days of David Livingstone and the exploration of Africa, Lions meant something more than we know. They were truly wild, revered and feared. Not domesticated and intimidated . Mankind has a way of driving out the beast . It's not random that the beast and the devil are associated. They were devils and bedeviled.

There is a spirit in nature that goes beyond mind kind. It's found in the wilderness far away from man. In more concrete terms, it was once in the Lion. A creature that mirrored it's African environment. Rough and unforgiving, it takes a cunning sort of intelligence to live here. A strength and vibrancy that radiates. Imagine time stilling and running your hand over this beast. The hair would be think and rough.

The muscle rugged and bulging , not and ounce of fat. Machine like but very alive , in fact hyper alive. In away, you could literally feel it's piercing intensity through it's body. His furs almost like needles, speed and ferocity in every shape. Like an Italian race car meant for racing, yet this animals meant to dominate and conquers daunting creatures.

Why do lions and tigers mostly tend to walk back and forth in a pattern in their cages in a zoo? Humans aren’t the only creatures who like to do different things at different times of their day or week. Very much like human prisoners in solitary confinement, these animals are bored out of their minds literally. All creatures of any level of noteworthy intelligence desire mental and physical stimulus.

You may find mice and hamsters in pet shops repeating behaviors like pacing, or doing flips, or constantly over-grooming themselves. Children may find some of this cute, but this really is a sign of mental breakdown. Animals pulled from their natural environment and confined to a space hundreds of times smaller than their homeland are bound to show strange behaviors when prevented from getting the exercise their bodies and minds need.

This is why many of the zoos who’ve been able to afford large swaths of land have developed wild animal parks, instead of caging their subjects. Roaming the (even artificially planted) countryside sometimes makes (allows) the animals harder to view, but it does wonderful things for their physical and mental health. Spend an hour in a closed room with no technology of any sort. Now, imagine spending all hours of every day this way. You might start to pace, too.

Here come the “caged animals are stressed” answers. I used to believe that. I have observed that even some animals with large, enriched habitats still pace. My cat paces. She stands at the screen door and paces back and forth. Outside, she paces the fence line. Constantly. To the point that the neighbors thought she was tied to a stake. Inside, she paces in the picture window.

She paces, because she is watching constantly and doesn’t want to miss a thing. Pacing gives her the full perspective of what she’s seeing. She is quite intelligent and very curious and wants to see everything. It is her version of television. She paces because she loves it. I do have to feed her more in the summer, when she is pacing outside. She could pace herself to skin and bone! Cheers!