Wondering where the big cats are

by winecountrydog

Sun's up, uh huh, looks okay
The world survives into another day
And I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

I had another dream about lions at the door
They weren't half as frightening as they were before
But I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me . . .

Walls windows trees, waves coming through
You be in me and I'll be in you
Together in eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me . . .

Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay
One of these days we're going to sail away,
going to sail into eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I'm wondering where the lions are . . .
I'm wondering where the lions are. . . .

– Bruce Cockburn "Wondering Where The Lions Are" (1979)

Shackle, an 11-year-old African lioness, spent the night in a church with her human and others who couldn't make it off Bolivar Peninsula on the Texas coast, near Galveston, before Hurricane Ike struck.


AP News, 16 September 2008

Many years from now, a small group of Hurricane Ike survivors will probably still be telling the story of how, on the night the storm flattened their island, they took sanctuary in a church — with a lion.

The full-grown lion was from a local zoo, and the owner was trying to drive to safety with the animal when he saw cars and trucks stranded in the rising floodwaters. He knew he and the lion were in trouble.

He headed for the church and was met by a group of residents who helped the lion wade inside, where they locked it in a sanctuary as the storm raged. The water crept up to their waists, and two-by-fours came floating through broken windows. But the lion was as calm as a kitten.

When daylight came, everyone was still alive.
"They worked pretty well together, actually," said the lion's owner, Michael Ray Kujawa. "When you have to swim, the lion doesn't care about eating nobody."

Shackle the lion and her human friends escaped the wrath of Ike at First Baptist Church in Crystal Beach.


The towns of Crystal Beach and Gilchrist are on the Gulf of Mexico, along the 30-mile peninsula that stretches across the southern part of Galveston Bay. This is an area of seaside getaways, and of fishing and shrimping operations.

But not anymore.

Bobby Jobes, one of the many Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens who've been deployed since Hurricane Ike, was quoted as saying, "There's nothing there. . . ."

"Nothing" except some animals — including stranded big cats!

According to Texas blogger Susan Evans, there's at least one tiger loose.

I'm wondering where and how the cats are. . . . I hope they get through this alive.