The Pitfalls of Living with a Lion – Fringe Florida

As I clean up a bag of flour scattered by my mischievous golden retriever (I swear she only had free roam of the house for 30 minutes), I think of Terine and realize it could be much worse, much, much worse.   Terine had a pet lion.

I met Terine at Everglades Outpost wildlife sanctuary during the research of my book, Fringe Florida. She volunteered at the rescue outside Homestead and was raising the 7-month-old lion cub for a breeder. At the time, Mus was about the size of full-grown golden retriever. He lived with her, slept in her bed, and shared a litter box with her domestic cat. This of course created quite of few challenges, not the least of which was the potential loss of digits.

Jokes aside, exotic cats belong only in the wild. Period.

I’ll talk about Terine and other unique Floridians from Fringe Florida tonight at the Vero Beach Book Center. Event begins at 6 pm. In the meantime, my pet goes into timeout, and I’ll be wiping flour off my skirt all the way to Vero Beach.