Years
ago, when Pitser Garrison was the mayor of Lufkin,
a young African lion was born at Ellen Trout Zoo.
When the cub was rejected
by its mother, zoo director Tim Jones and his wife Jerri carried it to their home
and raised it as well as they could. The cub even made several appearance on Jones’s
television show, “Zoo Review.”
When the cub was older, it was placed back
in the zoo and became one of the zoo’s most popular attractions. The cub was so
gentle that Tim and Jerri often carried it home with them.
Feeling that
the lion needed a name, Jones named the cub “Little Pitser” for the mayor. One
night, as he and Jerri were at home, with Little Pitser resting in his special
bed, someone knocked on the front door.
When Tim opened the door, there
stood Mayor Garrison and his wife Bernice. “We’ve come to see Little Pitser,”
the mayor announced.
The mayor held the cub and told Jones, “Don’t ever
get rid of Little Pitser,” and offered to pay for a special cage for the lion.
At that year’s Hushpuppy Olympics, a cookoff for hushpuppy cooks, the
zoo keeper showed off Little Pitser. He was soon the zoo’s most popular resident,
especially among the town’s children.
Things were going great for Jones
until he looked closer at Little Pitser one day and discovered he was a female
and would never grow a mane.
“Oh, my goodness,” thought Jones, “how am
I going to tell the Mayor that Little Pitser is a she lion.”
But Jones
came up with a unique solution.
He called Bob Dooley, who ran a drive-through
animal exhibit near Dallas, and asked him if he had any male African lion cubs.
Dooley said he did, and Jones persuaded him to trade him a male for Little Pitser.
When Dooley asked why, Jones told him.
After
Dooley stopped laughing, he agreed to make the trade if Jones would buy him a
steak dinner.
A new Little Pitser was brought to Lufkin,
and nobody--especially the mayor--ever knew the difference.
Bob
Bowman's East Texas
September 19, 2010Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers |
