The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Zion Wildlife Park is about an hour's drive south of Bill and Toni's place so off we went to view the white tigers and Barbary lions.

Zion, the big guy shown at the top is the actual lion used to create the model and digitised image for Asian in the film. It all smacked of a good day out. However, the reality was somewhat different. We expected to drive round the grounds with the doors and windows locked while man-eating beasts sat on top of the vehicle hungrily eyeing up the smaller morsels fixed into their travel seats - we'd acquired a son of a friend who had business that day nearby.

The animals were largely kept in surprisingly small cages and, although they seemed healthy enough, the layout and conditions were hardly 21st century animal husbandry. One cage held about 10 or 12 lions and at feeding time they went quite ballistic, jumping on each other and fighting to get to the gate for their feed. Once they had each bagged a lump of dead meat they quietly settled down to their feed but the crowding was a bit worrying.

The guy who owns the place, Craig Busch, has a popular TV programme, The Lion Man, which makes him out to be a veritable Florence Nightingale to the big cats but he's also famous for a bit of 'domestic' after he arrived home one night to find his partner in bed with two guys. A beautiful quote from his trial for beating her up was, 'He walked in and grabbed his partner by the hair, though the couple tried to calm him and explain things weren't as they seemed, the court was told.'

Yeah, right! Neither is the Wildlife Park.