If you ever find yourself being eaten by a lion…
…reach into its mouth, grasp its uvula and squeeze. It will let you go. This from a good friend who, I only just discovered this morning, once dated a lion trainer. It’s the kind of practical advice you never know when you’re going to need, and which you can only get on a pastry blog of this quality.
I had a good laugh over this one, until I realized I may actually require this information in the near future (going to be living near Mole National Park in Ghana in < 2 months)! Scary…
See now…you never know where potentially life-saving information may come from. Which Is why I felt compelled to blog it. But I didn’t know you lived in Africa, Ann. Or are you moving there?
– Joe
I’ll be “living” there for three months, come February. Hopefully I’ll meet a lion, but not up close 🙂
I’m keeping my fingers crossed, Ann. But just in case, remember the uvula.
You know, I could have used this information as a young teen. I was (and still am) an animal NUT. When I was a young teen the circus came to town at the county stables where I spent my days. They brought troupes of animals and I began spending a lot of time with the circus animals. Back in the day they didn’t pay too much attention to a scrawny girl and I parked myself by the large cat cages every waking moment. Pretty soon I had my hands in the cages and was petting the pretty cats and scratching their chins and in my naivete I thought we were friends…. then the circus moved on and my parents didn’t let me out of their sight knowing that I wanted to go with them (the circus wouldn’t have objected). I never did see the inside of the Lion.
Fast forward to when my children were very small and my husband worked in motion pictures. We went on an off day of a very long film project to see a group of Leopards that were being used in the film. There were lines on the floors marking out the do not cross zone but it wasn’t really emphasized until my 2 year old crossed just over the line, still holding her dad’s hand and the ONLY de-clawed cat had gone from “sleeping” to having her in its paws so quickly we never saw it move. The animal keepers were ashen. The film was Passion in the Desert and large segments were filmed in Utah. I also have another good story from those days but that will have to wait for the right prompt.
So if you are ever planning on using the uvula squeeze, you’d better move very fast or you’re down the hatch! I will now return this pastry blog to its rightful author who seems to have gone wandering from the kitchen…
Good Lord, Connie…what a story — both of them! I guess a 2-year-old is just the right sized Scooby snack for a hard working leopard between takes. Perhaps we need to be teaching the uvula trick to our children. It only makes sense!
– Joe