Safari (II)

While my son queued up to buy the lion bus tickets for us all, I quickly ran good 500 m to a ticket vending machine. That was for a ticket to take a picture with a lion cub. It was also so popular that the ticket would be sold out soon, a clerk had told me. My everyday night run was rewarded. I beat the most people to it and successfully bought 5 tickets, each for 500 yen, for a desirable time immediately after the lion bus tour.
After the exciting experience of feeding lions, we went to the place. There was a line of people already waiting for a shot with the cub. We joined the queue. It took 10 minutes for our turn to come. While we were waiting we could see a cute baby lion held by a boy with his family, then a young woman with her boyfriend.... The cub became sometimes fretful seemingly bored of the same thing with different people repeating endlessly. We could hardly wait.
Finally our turn came. The keeper passed me the baby lion. I held the cub facing to the camera and put him on my lap. Just as the other keeper pressed the shutter button of my camera, the small lion on my lap began to struggle to get out of my hold. The keeper came up. She took him from me and to my surprise she began to spank him... not so hard... but... The cub kind of meowed. Then she passed me the cub again. Somehow he sat still while she took the picture of us. Next my mother held him. Again he tried to escape from her hold. The keeper came and spank him. He became calm and was taken a picture with us. It repeated until every one of us, 5 people had held him to be taken a picture of.
We were so happy to touch the king of all beasts even if it was small but the cub obviously looked not. There are 80 lions in that park. It must cost a lot to feed them. The cub is working hard to support the grownups. It is like pension. Young people support elderly people.
Domesticated wild animals are sad. They seem to have lost something important to live. I am not sure if they feel sad or not. But I feel it is wrong to keep them within a fenced area even if it is far larger than an ordinary zoo.
It was fun anyway though I doubt I could form a friendship with the cute animal.
The picture(up left) is the "official" photo of the cub and my daughter, permitted as of today. The picture right is an "unofficial" photo of my mother, 84, in the pouch of a kangaroo.