Alex

You are one of the best photographers in the world. Hiding in a canopy you take pictures of a lioness giving birth. Your pictures capture the utter beauty and grace of this moment. You can’t help forming an attachment to the lioness and her new cub. A few days later the malnourished mother tries to hunt. She’s exhausted, but it she doesn’t eat, her little cub will die. She chases after a zebra. As she jumps to attack the zebra, it kicks in defence. Staring through your lens, you capture a magnificently painful moment in time.

You want to leave. You want to get away from the tragedy. But you know the story isn’t complete until the cub dies. Now you have to go back to the little defenceless cub, watch it die without its mother… and take pictures.

The little cub rolls around in the dust, crying from hunger and loneliness. Its little lungs pierce the darkness and your heart. It’s crying to its mother. Your heart grows weaker still as you watch the cub drift away in agony. You take your last photo and drive away. You don’t want to be here when it dies.

You’re rolling around in your bed. Your photographs haunt you. You can almost hear its little cry for help. It’s probably dead by now, but it might still be crying. You jump up, grab some milk and drive off. You don’t know what you’re doing, but you can’t sit and do nothing. It’s barely alive when you get there. You manage to get some milk into its dry throat.

Three days later the little cub plays with your shoe laces. You can’t help but smile, and steal a few photos for your private collection. You have to give the cub away. It’s a wild animal; you can’t take care of it. When it grows up, you won’t be able to control it. But for now, you just want to enjoy playing with it.

A friend of yours is a vet, so you take little Alex to get inoculated. He warns you sternly to give the cub away, but you can’t. You won’t. Little Alex will be your little secret…

Since you took her in until the day she was shot, people warned you to give her away. But you held on too tightly. You saw the signs, but you couldn’t let go. When she was two years old she ripped your sofa to shreds and growled ferociously at you. You just gave her a huge chunk of meat to calm her down. Your life became terribly difficult, your photography suffered beyond repair. Yet, when Alex behaved, when you held her tight, you felt safe and secure. In the end, she was all that mattered to you. Even while she killed you, you only wanted her.

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The lion is anger, it’s lust, it’s jealousy and even fear. At first, it might seem innocent, small and harmless. You want to indulge… just a bit. You want to feed it… just a little. But if you feed it too much… it will tear you apart. There might be a time to indulge, to save the cub from dying. But then you must give it away. When it grows up, you won’t be able to control it. Give it to someone who knows how to take care of it.

If you are angry, if you feed that anger too much, it will mature into hatred. If you feed that hatred, it will devour you.

I beg you, don’t allow wild animals into your heart.