Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/550022
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 AUGUST 2015 24 I t's an unfair world we live in, it must be said. From the time I woke up this morning till now, I must have drawn breath around… ooh, too many times to bother counting. And with every breath I took, I must have inhaled countless microscopic water droplets from the air… any of which might have contained an entire ecosystem of infinitesimal living organisms, such as bacteria. This means I have quite possibly murdered literally millions of living creatures in the past seven or eight hours alone. And this gruesome death- toll does not include the billions of other bacteria currently residing in my stomach and intestinal tract… a sizeable portion of which are inevitably killed every time I 'do what a man's gotta do' on the toilet. And yet, despite having singlehandedly slaughtered an unquantifiable number of living beings every single day of my life... to date I have not been forced into hiding by an international online lynch- mob. Nobody has called me a 'murderer', or posted pictures of all the cute, cuddly little bacteria I so cruelly defecated to death this very morning. But then, one American dentist shoots one, measly little lion somewhere in Africa… and just look at the global response. I don't recall such unanimous demands for retribution, even in the case of Osama Bin Laden, who murdered three thousand people. And that, I suppose, is the thing about lions. Their reputation precedes them. And it is a reputation built on centuries (if not millennia) of attributing to these African mammals all the qualities we would dearly love to be able to call our own… but for very obvious reasons can't. Courage. Strength. Beauty. Majesty. In a nutshell, all the things that human beings seem to have come to this world for the sole purpose of defecating upon. Just think of all the recognisable icons that have evolved over the years, reinforcing our mental image of this animal as an instant symbol of power, grace and dignity. Such as the MGM lion, proudly roaring on the silver screen. The Lion and the Unicorn, immortalised in sculpture all over the former British Empire. Or the TVM advert, informing us in sombre tones that: "I drink Lion Brand Tea. Shouldn't you…?" Etc. Etc. Then there are all the literary allusions: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Cowardly Lion from Wizard of Oz. Or the Nemean lion, slain by Hercules in the days before the invention of Facebook outrage (i.e., when 'slaying lions' was considered a perfectly reasonable activity for an unemployed demigod to pursue). This fascination with lions has even infiltrated the English language. We talk of 'lionising' people, when attributing to them the same quasi-mythical status reserved for the genus 'Felis leo'. It has left claw-marks on the world of sport, too. The UK's official rugby union, for instance, decided to name its international touring side 'the British Lions'... even if these 'Lions' sometimes get mauled by such harmless creatures as 'Wallabies', 'Springboks', and even the occasional f lightless bird such as the 'Kiwi'. This alone illustrates how the myths we create do not always match up to reality… but still, we cling to these myths regardless. The 'British Lions' will not rename themselves the 'British Field Mice', no matter how many times they are devoured by animals much further down the food chain. This because the myth of the lion – 'The King of the Jungle', even if you'll never actually find one there – is simply too alluring to ever let go. All of which might explain why the killing of one particular specimen named 'Cecil' – though I'd bet a box of Lion chocolate bars that he never actually responded to that name – has provoked such spectacular global outrage. Walter Palmer, it seems, slew more than just a random lion on his ill-fated hunting trip to Zimbabwe. He also took aim at, and shot, all our most cherished preconceived notions about this magnificent creature (and therefore, by extension, about ourselves). This makes him guilty of singlehandedly murdering all that is good, and innocent, and pure, and noble, and majestic in this increasingly ugly world. And by the looks of things, he is paying for this crime to the full. But let's stick to the myth for the time being. Do lions deserve the aura of majesty that human imagination has endowed them with? That they are beautiful, graceful and strong, I suppose, goes without saying. But are they also as 'courageous' and 'magnanimous' as the tsunami of Facebook memes now seem to suggest? To give an indication of the absurd extent to which this myth has now been taken: the last Facebook post I read urged "forgiveness for Walter Palmer… because that's what Cecil the Lion would have wanted" (!). Personally, I was unaware that Cecil was a keen advocate of the 'do unto others as ye would have others do unto you' motif… popularised by the same early Christians his kind ate so many of around 2,000 years ago. If so, I somehow doubt he would have survived long enough on the African savannah to be 'murdered' by an American dentist in the first place. We were also told that "Cecil the Lion had never harmed anyone"... unless, of course, you count the poor little antelope he feasted on for breakfast that morning; not to mention the innocent offspring of other lions he might have savagely slaughtered, as part of the natural process by which male lions claim female mates in the wild. (Cecil had cubs of his own, which will now suffer the same fate.) This latter detail alone should be enough to explode the little bubble of romantic idealism that has overshadowed this entire incident from day one. The life of a lion, in reality, is a far cry from the almost chivalric notions we have imagined for ourselves over the centuries. And Walter Palmer shot a real lion. He didn't shoot a symbol of some hopelessly unattainable, subconscious human desire; but a living, breathing member of the big cat family. And he is by no means the only human being to have ever done such a thing… not in Zimbabwe, nor in any other of a dozen African countries where lions are hunted for sport. This is from an article in Time magazine this week: "[Zimbabwe] is a country where… hunters exported 49 lion trophies in 2013 alone… and where, since Cecil's death 'it's likely that at least a dozen other lions have been shot by trophy hunters'." Strangely, there was no corresponding outrage at the killing of so many other lions: Opinion I would like to receive the newspaper MaltaToday for a period of one year. Name & Surname .................................................................. Telephone: ........................................ Address ...................................................................................... E-mail: ........................................ FOR €67 YOU CAN RECEIVE THE MALTATODAY, FOR A PERIOD OF ONE YEAR. Send a cheque payable to MediaToday to: Subscriptions, MediaToday, Vjal il-Rihan, San Gwann, SGN 9016 The newspapers are delivered by post and therefore subject to the usual postal timings. Normally, MaltaToday should arrive on Monday. SUBSCRIPTION FORM Death of a (celebrity) lion… Raphael Vassallo Walter Palmer, it seems, slew more than just a random lion on his ill-fated hunting trip to Zimbabwe. He also took aim at, and shot, all our most cherished preconceived notions about this magnificent creature