By Joel A. Hess –

Lions don’t make good pets. Every year we read a story about some poor fool who wanted to have a wild animal as a pet. A couple of years ago, a woman’s monkey mauled her friend. I remember trying to have a raccoon as a pet. It didn’t work out for either of us. Then, of course, there are pythons sneaking in the neighbor’s bushes, alligators in New York sewers, and from time to time a Lion leaping over his owner’s fence and rambling down Highway 131. Wild animals don’t make good pets. Yet we can’t help trying to domesticate them.