playing with a thunderstorm

"pets" is this weeks challenge over at i heart faces.
but I do not have a pet.
although, I should VERY much like one (for you matt, if you happen to read todays post) :)
a pug, a min-pin or even better yet...an english bulldog.  *sigh*  but it is not to be.
you see...my husbands heart is three sizes too small...he and the grinch are cousins. :)
*bigger sigh* but I love him anyways :)

I like to imagine sometimes what it would be like to have a pet.
having the thought like tiny tim from a christmas carol
"if I can't have none of them, why not want all of them?" 
and if I could pick any animal in the world without fear of being bitten or eaten,
I think I would pick a lion.
a lion?!
yes.  I lion.

when you're a kid, what's the first animal you want to see at the zoo?  yup, it's a lion.  they're majestic.  they're powerful to the point of being slightly scary.  and their eyes look like they've seen a lot and could tell stories if they could talk - almost as if they're looking through you...

as a young girl I read the chronicles of Narnia.  and my fascination with lions only grew.
aslan was all of the things I imagined a lion to be and more!

"...He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail.
then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table.
laughing, though she didn't know why, lucy scrambled over it to reach him.
Aslan leaped again.
a mad chase began.
round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs.
it was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like
playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten 
lucy could never make up her mind..."

so here is my "pet"...
photographed from an amazing place called "out of africa" set in the high hills of arizona.
his name is lazarus.  he almost died as a cub and was even pronounced dead for a full minute before simply breathing on his own.
I like that...Lazarus. :)