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Have you ever been to the zoo or the circus? How would you like to live in a zoo where the animals were not in cages? The land in Africa on each side of the Equator is like that. A great many of the animals are dangerous, yet some are not.
A lion is a huge cat. but he is the wildest kind of a wild cat. He is the most terrifying of all wild animals—his roar is enough to “freeze the narrow in your bones.” even if he happens to be behind bars in the zoo. No wonder he is feared by all animals and fears none. Other animals have always to be on the watch against enemies, but the lion can lie down and go to sleep without watching or worrying or caring about enemies.
My father used to say if you wanted to catch a bird alive the thing to do is to put a little salt on his tail. But you can’t catch lions that way and you can’t catch birds that way either. If a hunter wishes to catch a lion alive for the zoo or circus, he must catch him in a trap called a snare, which is a pit dug in theground and covered over with branches and twigs. The lion falls into it and then must be caught with a very strong net. If, however, a hunter wishes to kill the lion. he hides near a water-hole and waits until the lion comes for a drink, or else the hunter kills some harmless animal as you might dig worms for bait to catch fish and places him in the lion’s path. One of the animals used for bait is a zebra—a poor, harmless animal that looks like a little pony with stripes. Nature has given the zebra stripes that look like the shadows of tall grass so that he cannot easily be seen.
