Lion as ultimate home guard

ROBBERS planning to attack a Free State game farmer and his wife face a fearsome barrier – a three-year-old male lion named Lobengula.

Tobie Bird, 46, and his wife Christolien, 31, started using Lobengula on their farm in Hopetown after they received information last month that a gang of robbers was planning an attack.

“I was in hospital at the time and couldn’t think of any other way to protect my family,” Tobie Bird, who is a former policeman, said.

“How do you fight off from a hospital bed?”

Lobengula, whose name means “men of the long shields” was brought to the farm when it was a year old.

It was rejected and mauled by the other lions on the farm, but the Birds nursed it back to health.

“He is still a wild lion. He was raised by his mother in the wild,” he said. attackers