Lions and Tigers and Snares
By Vincent Diamond
Mid-afternoon is usually quiet at a big cat refuge, but the lion’s roar drowned out Captain Russo’s voice on my cell phone.
“Hold on a sec, let me get past Walter Martin.” I strode past the lion cage. Flies buzzed over a beef leg at the cat’s feeding station; Walter had popped off the ends of the bones to lick at its yellow marrow. The rank odor of rotting meat and lion crap made me wrinkle my nose. The bucket of chicken parts stuffed with Imodion I carried had its own stench. What a job.
“Who the hell is Walter Martin, and what is that frigging noise?” Captain Russo’s nasal tone wavered a bit. The signal was never strong at the Patacoochee Wildlife Refuge in north Florida. Eighty miles northwest of Gainesville, and fifty miles south of T
