BRAVE BRIAN HAS Lions..it’s Nevermindthe humans whoterrifyme
IN THE 25 years Brian Reid has looked after the big cats at Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park, he says the scariest moments haven’t involved battling fierce male lions or protective female tigers.
He claims the most terrifying times always involve hapless visitors.
Every year, Brian, 48, sees members of the public get out of their cars inside the lion enclosure.
He has watched them fetch items from their car boots, open rear passenger doors to check on their kids and roll down windows to take pictures of lions lying close by.
Brian then has to race out in his jeep to get visitors back in their cars.
He said: “I don’t know what goes through some people’s heads. I don’t know if they don’t realise they are actually in the lion enclosure, although there are signs everywhere which tell them to stay in their car.
“Perhaps because it’s a safari park some people make the assumption the lions are tame – they’re not.
“It’s normally a mum you see getting out of the car and going into the back of the vehicle to get something for the kids. You should see the shock on their faces when they realise what they’ve done.
“It can happen two or three times a year. Even opening a window can be so dangerous, which is why there are signs telling everyone to keep their sunroofs and windows closed.
“A lion could quite easily get in a car, grab someone by the arm and pull them out.
“It’s just as well the lions like lazing about so much. While they might look up, they haven’t ever done any more.”
Brian first started working at the safari park, near Stirling, when he was 21.
It was supposed to be a summer job before starting university. But 27 years on, he’s still working at the animal park and has just celebrated his 25th anniversary of working with lions.
Brian, who is now head keeper of lions and tigers, said: “I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to look after the lions.
“I’d driven into the enclosure and was obviously doing something different to what was normal so the lions knew something was up.
“One lion started going for me, so I started chasing them. We were chasing each other round and round in a figure of eight. I was pretty scared at the time but I must have got over it quickly as I went back.”
There are currently nine African lions at Blair Drummond. Male Zoulou, 13, is head of the pride and lioness Karis, eight, is mum to five-year-old females Isla and Thistle. Their brothers, born in the same
d Safari and Drummon Blair tells Park lion keeper Adventure he has special bond about the dangerous the formed with after helps to look animals he
litter, are Reid and Murray – named after Scots tennis great Andy.
Karis’s sister Libby, nine, is mum to cubs Faith and Hope, who were born last November.
Brian, from Ti l licoultry in Clackmannanshire, said: “I love the tigers we have but they are solitary creatures. Lions, on the other hand, like being part of a group. I love watching the dynamics between them all – from the playful cubs who are so full of fun, jumping about all over the place, to Zoulou who is just so dominant, always sitting there like the top cat.
“Reid and Murray are at an age where they want to try and be the chief.
They are big, beautiful-looking lions who will move on sometime in the near future to have families of their own. In the meantime, Zoulou has to keep on top of things.
“Then you’ve got the females of the pride. Karis is the alpha female at the moment. It’s always her that annoys everyone else and she likes to chase Libby, just to show who’s boss.
“Nine out of 10 times, the scrapes between different lions are handbags at dawn – all noise and posturing – so we can sit back and watch.
“You know when things are getting too involved and I’ll drive up in my jeep and split up the fight.”
Dad-of-three Brian, who named lion Libby after his then baby daughter, has learned to read all the expressions and body postures of members of the pride.
He said: “I never get bored watching them. At one point, we had 23 lions in the pride but that was too many. About nine is a good number.
“Apart from Zoulou, who came here from Emmen Zoo in the Netherlands in 2016, I’ve known them all since birth.”
Over his years as a lion keeper, Brian has introduced hundreds of challenges for the lions, from hiding food for them to find, to inventing different hanging toys they must pull to release treats.
He says they also respond to scent, adding: “We use different spices and perfumes in the enclosure, which the lions find and like to roll about in.
“I try to vary the scents. Calvin Klein’s
Obsession is one of their favourites. They really like that.”
Brian’s only injuries have been from nips and claw swipes from young cubs. He said: “Even when they are tiny they can give quite a nip and shred you – but that’s part of the job.
“We have to handle them for health tests when they are young but we don’t want to get them too used to humans. As they get older, we keep our distance and everything is double-checked so that distance always remains.
“But they do get used to you being around. You get close to some lions, especially the older ones who come up and let you scratch their face through the mesh.”
Brian says the pride usually responds with respect to seeing his jeep. But things don’t always go as planned. He said: “There have been occasions where there have been a few marks left on my jeep from swipes of paws and one big cat pulled off a bumper.”
The keeper admits the death of any big cat, young or old, is the area of the job he finds most tough. He said: “We’ve had old lions who have been put to sleep due to their poor quality of life. When they get old, the younger ones can bully them.
“We’ve never had any cubs who have been rejected by their mothers but we have had a female lion who lost her milk. As a result, we lost the cubs as we don’t hand-rear cubs any more. But for all the sadness, there is so joy, too.
“Being a park keeper is hard work – there is a lot of shovelling of not-verynice stuff – but I love what I do.”
The lions at Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park feature in the new series of the Midas Media show Vets: Gach Creutair Beò, which is on BBC Alba tonight at 8.30pm.