Zamba

by Ralph Helfer

  If the window was rolled down, he would stick his head out to catch the breeze. I can tell you that many a passerby was startled by the sight of this massive lion’s head sticking out of the rear window! Sometimes it was pure comedy. People would trip getting up on the curb, or ride their bicycles into parked cars. It had the potential to be quite a dangerous situation! The scariest thing for me was when drivers would pull up alongside of me, going sixty on the freeway, trying to show their kids the “pussycat.” I was always terrified that the car in front of them would stop short.

  During the filming of the movie Fluffy in 1964, the script called for Zamba and Tony Randall to go for a ride in a convertible. To get the shot, they pulled off the studio lot and into real traffic, next to a car containing a yippy little dog who had been going crazy in the backseat of the car, barking at everything that went past and throwing himself around. I will never forget the look on that little dog’s face when he got a load of Zamba. It certainly shut him up.

  When we were on the road, Zamba was always meticulous about not using the car as a litter box. If he had to go, he’d use a nearby lawn. We carried a really super-duper pooper-scooper, and sometimes were able to catch it before it hit the ground. To Zamba, it was one of the baffling things humans did; I’m sure he wondered what in the world I was doing back there.

  Occasionally we would go to the local drive-in movie theater. After all, we couldn’t find a babysitter for a lion! Luckily, he loved going to the movies, especially to Westerns. The owner let us in free, although once a girl at the ticket booth wanted to charge us extra for him. A sleepy yawn from Zamba that displayed his rather large teeth quieted her down. We had to keep the windows rolled down most of the time as his breath would quickly fog them up, making it impossible to see the action on screen. Down in front!

  9

  As I have said, Zamba’s training was pretty much constant. Every moment we spent together was an opportunity to teach him something new about living in the human world.

  Every domestic cat owner knows how hard it is to keep delicate knickknacks out of tail’s reach. Imagine what it’s like living with a cat who weighs five hundred pounds! Anything delicate on a table was fair game—with a bump of his rear or a swish of his tail, Zamba could smash my favorite things to smithereens without even noticing.

  So one of the greatest challenges I faced when I invited Zamba to share my home was teaching him not to accidentally break things. Because I couldn’t always be present when he put himself in a position where something could be broken, teaching him to be careful took more time and effort than all the other behaviors together.

  Traditional commands weren’t effective if the behavior wasn’t deliberate. It didn’t work to tell him no when he was about to knock over a statue by swishing his tail across the coffee table, because he had no idea what I wanted.

  It was just turning into a serious problem when I had an idea. I completely rearranged a part of the house by taking away any breakable items and replacing them with “fake” ones. An empty pickle jar stood in for a piece of statuary. A tin cup filled with stones and fake flowers replaced a crystal vase filled with the real thing. It was a big job. We put the fake pieces in places we knew he would probably knock them over, and we picked items that made a noise when falling because he always reacted if the object he knocked over made a loud noise, and I thought this would make him understand the problem more readily.

  It was like going to school, so I called it “the classroom.” When Zamba was there, I was there to correct him. I tried to make it as much like a real domestic setting as possible, and spent as much time there with him as I could, eating many of my meals and living there as much as possible.

  In the classroom, I discovered that most of the damage came from his tail. He didn’t seem to know that it belonged to him! He’d whip his tail and send something crashing to the floor, and look back in surprise to see what had caused the commotion. And of course, swishing his tail was natural. We had to find some way to teach him that his tail was his, and that he was responsible for it.

  Since just saying no didn’t work, I got a long, thin, flexible reed. I tried it on myself, and was satisfied that it caused no pain. When Zamba hit something, I would nip the tip of his tail with the reed as a reminder, and at the same time, in a deep baritone voice, say, “NO!”

  It took a few days before he related to it. There were times when I had to set him up, by calling him between two tables filled with fake knock-me-downs. And there were times when he knocked something over, and I couldn’t correct him in time. As the object crashed to the floor, he’d look over at me like a spoiled kid, with a don’t-you-care? look. But ultimately he wanted to please me, and as time passed, the word “no” was enough to remind him to mind his tail before it did any damage. In a week or two, I was able to lay the reed aside.

  Learning the word “no” was really the beginning of Zamba’s education. In fact, it’s usually the first, and quite possibly the most important, step in training any animal.

  When you’re relying on a command to control an animal, it’s essential that it understands and responds to “no!” When it hears that word, it has to stop in its tracks and wait for the next command before proceeding, or you can get into a dangerous situation. “No!” has to be the voice of God Almighty for that animal.

  This is for their own protection, more than anything. It’s the same thing with children. If you see your son or daughter heading off the sidewalk into a crowded intersection, you need to be able to yell, “NO!” and have the child stop in his tracks. You can (and should) explain later about looking both ways before you cross the street, and the importance of waiting for the light, but what you need at that immediate moment is obedience, or you’re going to be in big trouble.

  So it was with Zamba. Especially at the beginning, it’s important that the animal relate the act to the word, so the timing of the command was crucial. It was also very important for me, and everyone else participating in his training, to be consistent. “STOP IT!” or “DON’T!” were no good—it had to be “NO!” So we worked together until he knew that when I said, “No”—whether it was shouted or simply stated in a soft, firm manner—he was to stop whatever he was doing immediately.

  At the beginning, we used reprimands like the reed to teach him “no,” but he was a quick study, and there wasn’t much need to use them for very long. And once he’d gotten something, he knew it, so except for the occasional refresher, we could move on.

  And of course, showing appreciation is also a necessary part of the training. In the same way that “bad” behavior was accompanied by reprimands, “good” behavior was always followed with lavish compliments.

  This may sound similar to how domestic dogs and cats are trained—and perhaps it is. There is, however, a unique and very important distinction between the two. Everything is significantly more dangerous when you’re training an exotic. You cannot get a lion to stop eating a chunk of meat, or to stop breeding with his mate, unless your control is absolute. And you should never use this control in a frivolous manner. This trust is both a special gift and a necessity that can save lives or prevent an emergency.

  I took special care with certain other aspects of his training, from the time he was a cub. Of course, it was important that Zamba respect and like humans, but because he would be living and working with other animals, it was also important to me that he learn to live cooperatively with them. Over the years I’d always found that lions had a superior, holier-than-thou attitude toward the rest of the animal kingdom, which might explain why they have been dubbed “King of the Beasts.”

  I felt that if Zamba was brought up with animals of different species, he would grow to accept them. So, when he was a cub, I introduced him to a group of very young friends: Sabu, a Bengal tiger; Rough, a Canadian black bear; Jeri, a chimpanzee; and Onyx, an African leopard.

  Zamba lived in the house, and his friends lived in the animal nursery on the property. It w
ould have been a serious mistake to try to raise them all in the house on a full-time basis. When you raise more than one animal at a time in the same environment, two things happen: jealousy and bonding, both of which can stand in the way of effective training.

  Jealousy can create a very dangerous situation—either between the person and the animal, or between the two animals. It’s easy not to notice jealousy when animals are young, because any skirmishes between them are easy to stop, but as they get older, and other factors come into play, jealousy becomes more dangerous, especially in a male.

  While bonding is a worthy objective, it also has drawbacks. Exotics are fiercely loyal, and that means that their love is usually concentrated on just one very special person or animal. It was important to make sure that I was the object of Zamba’s affection, not one of the other animals. Often, if you give an exotic another animal to befriend and live with because it’s “lonely,” you will find it doesn’t need you, and that you have to compete with its playmate for its love. This isn’t to say that it shouldn’t have other close friends, but you must be the truly special one in its life, or the training relationship won’t work.

  So Zamba’s friends stayed in the nursery, cared for by a staff of wonderful people, and his get-togethers with them were limited to weekends, which usually worked into a “sleepover” in the house. My bed would be covered in a pile of sleepy-eyed babies, all stripes and spots. The animals had a blast, and it was good fun for me as well. It was not, however, a good way to get a decent night’s sleep. Someone would wake up in the middle of the night, wanting food. Someone would fall off the bed and need help getting back up. Someone would fall asleep on someone else’s head, and the one on the bottom would protest. Every single one of them would wake up as soon as the sun was up, and that was when playtime started. So if you wanted rest, you were better off on the couch.

  With his buddies, Zamba took the lead role right away. It wasn’t size, although he was bigger than they. It might have had to do with the fact that he lived in the house, or it could just have been that he was a lion. Whatever it was, he was never cruel or arrogant, but it was clear to everyone that he was the boss.

  From the very beginning, Zamba was incredibly friendly to people and to animals. He had no preference as to size or shape, two-legged or four. He would sidle up to you in the total belief that you were going to be his friend. And God knows, there is nothing cuter than a lion cub. Everybody wanted to cuddle him, and it was a struggle to keep him from getting spoiled. A real test of his discipline was for him to follow a command, even if it meant leaving an affectionate snuggle. I will confess that I often used this situation to reassure myself of his obedience.

  Because he was so friendly, he got confused when people were scared of him. Our neighbor called the police when she thought Zamba was “killing” her little boy. All he was doing was licking the ice cream off his face!

  He was a playful cub, so much fun to play with that it was easy to get wrapped up in playing with him, and to do nothing else. Luckily, he never lost that playful quality, even when he was full-grown. In one of his favorite games, he’d assume the I’m-asleep position, while peeking at you through his half-closed eyes. Then, without any notice, he would leap straight up, paws outstretched in an attempt to grab you and pull you down. If he was successful, he’d spend a few minutes licking your face—not quite realizing that his tongue was built to take meat off bone.

  Zamba was polite to everyone, but he definitely had preferences. Over time, I could tell pretty much right off the bat whether he liked someone. And he was extremely sensitive—preternaturally so, I’d say. Once, as an experiment, I asked someone I knew he didn’t like to prepare his dinner. Zamba had no way of knowing who’d cut his meat, but he wouldn’t eat that night until I’d had another handler replace the “tainted” meat with fresh.

  As friendly and well-behaved as he was, there were definitely moments when Zamba’s “lion” came out. For instance, he could be overprotective. One time, he scared a middle-aged woman half to death by roaring at her when she got too close to our car in the parking lot at the supermarket.

  It was important to impress upon people that Zamba was a full-grown African lion—a wild animal, not a pet. A lion, no matter how docile, is still a lion, and a lion is always potentially dangerous, an animal first. People would see us on the set together, and they’d see how he comfortable and loving he was with me. But that didn’t mean they could come over and pet him as if he were my poodle. (I don’t even think you should march up to a dog you don’t know and pet him without his handler’s permission, but that’s another story.) I was always astonished by how presumptuous people were, and would sometimes surreptitiously give Zamba his cue to snarl when someone was failing to show the proper respect. There was no malice behind the snarl—he was just doing what he was told. But that black lip curling back to reveal those enormous fangs always had a sobering effect on our unwanted company. They didn’t need to know that they could have safely put their hands right in his mouth.

  We always asked people not to approach Zamba directly from the front—a dangerous place to be if something went wrong. I would hold him and stand next to his head, and the person could come up behind me and pet him or have a picture taken, or whatever. If theirs was to be an ongoing relationship, I’d have them work their way around to the front of him so he could smell and bump them himself.

  You have to be careful where you touch a big cat, and how you pet it. It feels good to be petted, for both humans and animals, but, as with humans, “heavy petting” can trigger a sexual response in an animal. If you have a cat in your house, you know that when you stroke its back, it will press up into your hand with its tail lifted. This is a sexual response. Domestics will often whip around and grab your hand with their claws extended, holding tight, and in some cases, they’ll even draw blood.

  Certain exotic cats will have a similar response, but on a much more dangerous scale. Big cats can flop down, roll over, and demand stimulation that you may not want to give. Wrestling in play also has this potential; the cat may get “turned on” due to the close body contact, and can react by becoming aggressive, and refusing to let you go, using claws and fangs.

  I learned this one the hard way. During a stunt, I wrestled with a lion, and our encounter went past the point of no return for him. He became extremely possessive, claws out, snarling to let me know that I was his, and I couldn’t move an inch. I yelled to my men to get a sheet of plywood. Thankfully, we were on the studio lot, where construction supplies are plentiful. They brought one, about four feet by eight, and edged the plywood sheet between the lion and me. He was too intent to notice that I was slowly being separated from him. When the board was in place I carefully crawled out from underneath, and once I was on the other side, the lion reverted immediately back to his happy, normal self, as if nothing unusual had happened. It was always important to be mindful of these things when you were playing and working with any lion.

  And sometimes, although rarely, Zamba was just unruly. One incident stands out in my mind. When he was almost full-grown, I was invited to dinner by a couple who had heard me give a lecture on “Exotic Animals in the Home.” They asked me to bring Zamba. They had given me a fair amount of money for animal programs in need, and I thought it would be a good experience for Zamba, so off we went.

  For some reason, Zamba’s behavior was appalling that evening. Everything that could have gone wrong, did. As soon as we got there, he spotted the lady’s artificial rabbit skin coat—and attacked it, giving it quite a thrashing. When I finally got it away from him, it was ripped and torn to pieces. Personally, I didn’t mind, but once he had finished “killing the rabbit,” he proceeded to pee on the furniture! As dinner was served, he gave an explosive sneeze and a shake, thoroughly spraying the meal with lion snot. And during dinner, he wandered off into the kitchen and helped himself to a drink from the punch bowl.

  Although our hosts were gracious, I couldn’t
wait to get him out of there, and I said our good-byes with a palpable sense of relief. Unfortunately, Zamba wasn’t through. On the way out, he pinned their Great Dane to the floor and wouldn’t let him up. They thought he was going to kill their pet! Needless to say, we weren’t asked back.

  More often, however, it was humans who screwed up. On one shoot, for instance, Zamba was hired to “attack” a policeman. We practiced the move with a stuntman in costume, and everything went beautifully. The stuntman went off to have his makeup touched up while they were setting up the shot for real, and my assistant accidentally gave a cue. Zamba cooperatively went for the nearest policeman—a watchman who just happened to be guarding the gate to the set. Poor guy! He almost had a heart attack.

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  As a cub, Zamba slept in my bed most of the time. Many people were genuinely shocked to discover that I shared my bed with an African lion, and more people than I can even count asked me how someone of sound mind could do such a thing. I never worried about it. I believe that when you have devoted your life to something, it is important to see it through, no matter what comes. Zamba was sharing my life, and that meant he shared my bed.

  Being able to do this at all was a real gift for me. Believe it or not, I started out life allergic to cats. In fact, it was during my job at Hollywood Aquarium that I overcame the first serious obstacle standing between me and a career working with exotic animals: myself.