The Lion Problem

I was woken up just after 6.00 a.m by a call on my mobile. I knew it must be Alun, I’ve personalised the ring style so that it sounds like somebody hammering on my door.

“There’s a lion loose on the island, Jed,” he said.

“Are you sure?” I said, “we don’t get many lions on the island.”

“Yes Jed, I’ve just had a call from the boatman, he won’t be coming to the island today because a lion has been reported on our shore. The mainland council have issue a total ban on all contact with our island and have advised all residents to stay in their houses. That’s us Jed, me and you, all residents. That’s why I phoned, to let you know I won’t be coming over today.”

“You woke me at six in the morning to tell me you won’t be coming over.”

“To warn you about the lion Jed. I’d hate to think you might get up, go for an early morning stroll and walk straight into the lion’s mouth.”

“Where on Earth would it have come from?”

“The mainland Jed, it must have escaped from the mainland.”

“Lions aren’t from the mainland,” I said, “they’re from Africa.”

“Perhaps it escaped from the zoo Jed. Or maybe it hitched a lift on the boat with one of the African Olympic teams. It’s why they run so fast Jed, to get away from the lions.”

The first thing I did was to bring my geep into the house. The island is unsuited to sheep or goats, who find the island grass too coarse, so for centuries my family have kept geep instead. Currently I have a heard of six or seven who wander wild, but with a lion on the loose I had no choice but to bring them into the safety of the house. In a straight fight with a lion a geep would lose every time, they lack the teeth and claws of a full-grown adult lion. I locked them in the laundry room where they could do relatively little damage. I’ve learnt from previous experience that I need to keep the door locked, geep have mastered how to turn handles and have a habit of surprising me in the night.

No sooner had I rounded up the geep than there was a hammering on my phone. It was Alun.

“I’m getting bored Jed. All of this sitting indoors to avoid being eaten by lions. It’s tedious Jed, I can’t even go for a walk to look at the fridges on Refrigerator Bay. It’s lonely not having any company, I didn’t see the boatman today and I can’t even go out to visit you.”

“You’re lucky,” I said, “I don’t feel remotely lonely, I’m sharing my house with seven geep.”

“It’s no use Jed, I can’t stand this seclusion any longer. We need to end this isolation.”

Alun is by nature a party animal and craves human company. It’s the one thing he finds difficult about living on an island with a total population of just two people (figures from the 2011 Census, though frankly we could have worked it out for ourselves).

“How,” I asked, “you want me to come over and brave the lion?”

“Don’t be a fool Jed, it’s far too dangerous. I’ve decided to call a lion hunter,” he said.

“A lion hunter?” I said, “that sounds a bit extreme.”

“What other option is there? The council won’t do anything and the lion won’t just go away. I love wildlife as much as any man, but we can’t let it dominate us Jed. Mankind has risen above the rest of the animal kingdom and I refuse to sit here, trapped in my cage, while a lion wanders around having all the fun.

‘Trapped in his cage’? Was he being metaphorical I wondered, or had he managed to lock himself in a cage again. It was an awful fuss getting him out last time.

I agreed to go on google and find a local lion hunter. Luckily, although there are no lions on the mainland, there are a disproportionate number of lion hunters. I phoned up one who lived nearby, in the mainland town of NoLionsHere.

“A lion eh!” he said, sounding extremely excited. It’s something I’ve noticed in life, that people often sound excited, or worried or anxious, yet critics of my work (I write New York murder mysteries) often slate my stories for using exactly this type of description. ‘You should show the excitement, not tell it’ critics tell me. I sometimes write back to them. ‘You should show your criticism of me, not tell it.’ Since then I’ve received nothing but positive write-ups in the mainland media, though quite often turds arrive for me in the post.

“I’ve never seen a lion,” he said, “I’m really looking forward to shooting it.”

“You’ve never seen a lion? But you’re a lion hunter.”

“Yes, in theory, but I’m not allowed to kill lions now, it’s banned. Besides, there aren’t any lions where I live and I’m not allowed to travel overseas because of my nerves.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your nerves,” I said and described our location. Luckily, we were close enough to the mainland not to count as ‘overseas’.

I was woken at just after 5.30 the next morning by a gun being pointed at my face.

“You’re not a lion are you?” asked a portly old man, who sounded like he’d been drinking.

“No, no, I’m Jed,” I said, “not a lion at all. You must be the lionhunter. We spoke on the phone. ”

“How do you do,” he said, sticking out a paw, “I’m Jim, though you can call me anything you like as I never really listen. Where’s this lion thing then? I’ve been trying to bag one of these all my life.”

“It’s on the island, somewhere. There’s only ever been one sighting, so it could be anywhere.”

“Anywhere eh! I’ll start there.”

The hunter disappeared into the darkness. I spent the whole day expecting to hear the sudden sound of gunshot, or the screams of a savaged hunter, but nothing.

Lunchtime came and went with nothing more than a phonecall from Alun and slowly the world revolved on its axis and day turned into night. Nothing, not a sound had I heard all day, yet during that time the hunter must have checked every corner of our land, lifted every stone. Was it possible, perhaps, that there was not lion on the island after all?

I lay in bed unable to sleep, yet somehow, next morning, I was woken by a banging on my door.

I flung on some clothes and rushed downstairs. It was the tiger hunter and cradled in his arms was a tiny golden kitten, with a big bushy beard that you would really struggle to say looked like a lion’s mane, not unless Brian Blessed is a lion in his spare time.

“That’s your lion,” the hunter grumbled, “I tried to shoot him but he was too small and I missed. I’ll have to go home and get some more bullets, can you keep hold of him?”

“No, no,” I said, “you can’t kill him, it’s only a lovable kitten. The island has laws against killing kittens.” This was a lie of course, the island doesn’t have any laws at all now following a problem with lawyers, but he wasn’t to know (I haven’t written that particular story up yet) and I wanted to protect was an adorable, kitten from the bullets of a frustrated lion killer.

The lion hunter went home unhappy and I phoned Alun, who was soon hammering on my door.

“This is the lion,” I said laughing, “all that fuss about a little kitten.”

“It must have looked bigger from a distance, Jed. Some people have a genuine difficulty with perspective.”

“From a distance? You couldn’t see it from a distance, it’s tiny.”

We decided to keep him as a pet, to scare off mainlanders and council officials.

“We can call him Simba,” I said, “after the lion king.”

“No we can’t Jed. Disney owns the copyright for that name, we’ll have to call him Lenny, or Clive, or Bruce.”

Which is how Bruce got his name and Disney’s lawyers weren’t troubled. Bruce mostly lives with the geep, who have adopted him as one of their own. It’s funny how this island has developed a menagerie of miss-fit animals. I’d say that’s a metaphor for something, but that would be telling, not showing, and I’d hate to annoy the critics.