[Sidney Lanier]

That is pretty awesome! We visited the Adamson home when we were in Kenya and were awed by the feeling about the place of what those good people did for the wild creatures. We've heard such stories here in NY of animals like deer being rehabilitated into the wild who still return at times to their former human caretakers. I do think, though, that we need to be careful not to anthropomorphize naturally wild animals to too great a degree; in the case of this remarkable story, it's hard to think of this lion's mate as a 'wife' in the sense that we use the word.

Reminds me of the story about Mark Twain who maintained that he could not write except when surrounded by cats (the domesticated kind, not lions...). Because he had multiple homes, the story goes that when he stayed in Elmira (not his primary home which was in Farmington, now part of Hartford and an absolutely amazing place to visit!), he rented cats from a little girl who lived nearby. Leave it to one of the great minds of the late 19th-early 20th century....