LITTLE TYKE AND ME
A Lioness for a Playmate

Little Tyke, full grown and weighing in at 350 lbs, with her owner, Georges Westbeau, at the meat locker. Even when she was this big, she'd try to sit on my lap. About all that would fit, though, was a paw and her chin.

When I was living with Neveal and Clarence, I guess I was in the 5th grade, they rented a meat locker from someone named Georges Westebeau. (A "meat locker" was a storage unit at a public freezer company you could rent back in the days when the "ice box" in your kitchen used ice and didn't make it).

One day Georges and his wife (whose name I don't recall) came to visit and Georges said to me, "Hey, I've got a baby lion in the car, why don't you go down and see it?" Yeah, sure, everybody has a lion in their car. But I thought I'd play the game.

Sure enough there WAS a baby lion in the car! The golden-furred young lioness lay sleeping across the back seat, her paws dangling over and the tip of her drooping tail twitching in lazy circles. She woke up, yawned and stretched, then (I swear) looked at me and grinned.

I ran into the house and asked Georges if I could get in the car with her and he said yes, but Neveal said no way. So I went back and just stared through the window at her for the longest time; she pawed at the window and I talked to her -- Oh, she was magnificent!

I wanted to see the Tyke again; since first seeing her in the car, she filled my fantasies. Whenever Clarence went to the meat locker, I'd beg to go along hoping that the cub would be there. Georges always brought her to the locker with him, and she stayed in the back room, but a few times he brought her to the front and we could visit. I don't know why, but Tyke and I developed a very strong bond even before we got a chance to play together. She was always happy to see me when we came to the locker, would stand on her hind legs and stretch her paws to me across the counter. Her recognition and delight in seeing me made me feel special, and even blessed.

The lion's name (lioness, really) was "Little Tyke." She had been born in a zoo in Florida and had a mildly crippled foot. Because her mother rejected her, Georges was able to buy her.

Little Tyke was a complete and total vegetarian! Georges offered $1000 to anyone who could get her to eat meat, in any form, and people tried everything. They would wrap a piece of raw hamburger in a lettuce leaf and Tyke would eat the lettuce and spit out the hamburger; she wouldn't even eat meat that was cooked, no matter how it was disguised. Georges never had to pay the $1000.

The Westebeaus and Clarence became good friends, and about two months after the "lion-in-the-car" incident, they invited us for dinner. Neveal didn't want to go because she was afraid of the lion (and cats in general), but Clarence and I insisted. The first time I got to really play with Tyke freely in the Westbeau backyard, just the two of us and no grown-up overseers, she was about four months old and about the size of a medium-sized dog. We were playing in the back yard and I started to go into the house. She grabbed my leg between her paws and "mouthed" me -- she didn't have teeth (or at least didn't use them), and this frightened me a bit but didn't "scare me off". I still wanted to play with Tyke (and did for a long time).

Georges had quite a nice ranch along the Green River in Auburn, Washington. Besides Tyke, he had peacocks, chickens, several other different types of large and exotic birds, and four or five horses. We became frequent visitors, and in the evenings Georges would tell me to go out and bring in the horses for dinner. Tyke couldn't go along, but I would go out and point this little pinto pony toward home, climb on his back, give him a nudge, and ride him to the barn; the other horses would follow. When we got near the yard, Tyke would be on the other side of the fence, growling and snarling and acting every bit the wild animal; the horses had grown used to her by this time and weren't bothered. But that was a very remarkable thing -- a little girl riding a pony without any tack and a jealous little lion chasing after her, even if there WAS a chain-link fence between them.

Little Tyke, of course, grew rapidly. By the time she was full grown and weighed about 500 lbs (no longer a "Little" Tyke -- she was almost as tall at the shoulder as I was), we had become the best of friends. From the time I first met her, she would climb into my lap whenever I sat down and she'd follow me everyplace. When she got too big for my lap, she'd lay on her back at my feet and I would stroke her tummy; she'd purr and lick my face. Sometimes she and I would go out to the backyard and lay cuddled up together under a tree.

We developed a game I called hide-and-seek. Georges' back door led into the laundry room where there was a long table for folding clothes. Tyke and I would be in the backyard and I would run into the laundry room and dive under the table. Tyke would follow right behind, jump up on the table, put on the brakes, skid off, twist in mid-air, and land on the other side, looking at me. She'd growl and grin and I would back out from under the table, run back outside, Tyke would follow, and we'd play the game again. One time Neveal came into the laundry room just as I dived and Tyke leaped; she had a screaming fit and forbid me ever to go back to the Westebeau's. I tried to explain, Georges tried to explain, even Clarence tried -- but I never got to see Tyke again.

Georges used to take movies of Tyke and me; eventually he made a commercial movie "short" (which I have never seen). Tyke and I were also on a TV program called "You Asked For It", and the episode was the most requested for re-runs the show had. I never got to see any of those, either. People would tell me about having seen a program with a lion playing with a little girl; and I would tell them that was me and Tyke, but I always missed seeing the shows myself. I wish I had. When I was living in Hollywood, one of my co-workers said she had just seen the most remarkable movie about a little girl playing with a lion, but when I tried to find the movie, it wasn't playing.

I wish could see those films or get copies. I have put lots of feelers out into cyber-space, with no result. If you readers have seen these films or know of Little Tyke, please email or leave a message in my guestbook.

Tyke lived for several years, and I heard from somebody who didn't know I knew her that she had died. My heart was broken. I still miss her terribly and remember her often.

Marilyn was living with us part of the time, and she would go to the Westebeau's with us, but she was afraid of Tyke and wouldn't play with her. She's in some of the films as well, but she has never seen them either. She doesn't really remember Tyke, she just remembers "some big animal I was afraid of," and didn't know the "big animal" was a lion until we were reminiscing a few years ago.