THE LADY AND THE LIONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 340, 28 April 1928, Page 26

THE LADY AND THE LIONS

In Los Angeles a Frenchman and His Wife Rear and Train Lions. They have a £50,000 Lion Farm.

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ON’T let ’em play with your shoe-laces! That is one lesson to be learned, it seems, from the otherwise rather cheerful business of breeding kings of the

forest as some folks breed white mice. For a pioneer lion farmer of America spent many weeks in a hospital last vear. we learn, "because a three-year-old cub got a claw entangled in his shoe-laces, and then panic-stricken, clawed with all his might and bit with all his strength in the endeavour to get away.” Some twenty miles from where its new city hall marks the civic centre of Los Angeles is a place where, in days gone by, the old Santa Fe trail had its end, called El Monte. Just a few steps from the main business district is one of the world's strangest and newest of outdoor enterprises—perhaps unique in all the world—a lion farm. Gay’s Lion Farm—the Farm Extraordinary” The sign marks the present fruition of an extraordinary adventure that was embarked upon some eight > ears ago by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gay, the former a Frenchman by birth and for many years associated in w ildanimal training with the late Frank Bostock, and Mrs. Gay, an Englishwoman. formerly on the advertising staff of one of London’s big newspapers. Both are possessed of courage. perseverance, and vision in a remarkable degree, and both alike are endowed with a rare charm of personality and an understanding patience.

Go back some eight or nine years. In those early days David Horsleyplanned a series of wild-animal pictures, and in pursuit of this plan brought over from the Bostock show in London three great jungle beasts — Cyclone, Rosie and Mary. Along with them came Mr. and Mrs. Gay, the latter at that time accustomed only- to the usual routine of the devoted house-

wife, and utterly removed from any direct contact with the lions that her husband trained. Immediately upon their arriving in Hollywood, we are told, there was found to be a real place in which these three lions could be used to advantage. Almost simultaneously Mr. Gay had the opportunity of buying the three lions, and he did so. They were at that time quartered in a barn on a 23-acre farm on Mission Road in Los Angeles. Some three months later came the accident. Rosie presented Mr. and Mrs. Gay with three lively cubs, a male and two females. Six months later, Rosie, in the mean-

■ while having refused to listen to the then new doctrine of birth control, presented her owners with four more attractive cubs. Shortly after this further addition to the family of Cyclone and Rosie —Mary having apparently succumbed to the arguments of the followers of Mrs. Sanger—a visi; tor to the Gay home remarked one day, “How remarkable it is that you are right here in the heart of Los Angeles, and yet have a real farm!” To w-hich Mrs. Gay responded gaily, “Yes, a regular lion farm!”

That chance phrase was the nubbin of the idea out of which have grown assets worth more than £50,000. The mild climate had proved most favourable for Rosie's progeny, and dozens of people, attracted by the news that here were little lion cubs to play with and fondle, were flocking to the Gay farm. Why not make a business of it? Why not go into the business of raising lions for use in motion-pictures and have as a source of additional income the money that would come through charging admission to see the lions and lionesses and their progenyin settings that would approximate their native habitat? Meanwhile, also, the year after the first purchase, Numa and two females had been bought, and these three also were doing very well in the environment to which Mr. and Mrs. Gay had taken them. There seemed to be every reason in the world why the plan they had in mind might be at least worth trying out, so, in 1922, they bought five acres of ground in El Monte and proceeded to transform it into a jungle—a jungle, however, that, in deference to the fears of the countryside, was fenced in by huge posts of telegraph-pole size, with, heavy bars and strong steel netting. Cyclone. Rosie and Mary, Numa. and all the little lions at once took kindly to the new- environment. Family after family came into the world, and practically- all were healthy and stuf-dy. Rosie did so well that when she died last year she had mothered 4S cubs in seven years. Mary, in that time, had 21 cubs. Numa and his wives have also done well, so that (Continued on Page 27.)