Mamma mia, it's a pasta-eating lion - Monday "feel good"

LEA, a seven-year-old lioness arrived on a long-haul flight from Rome, Italy on Friday to take up residence in Johannesburg's Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve. Spokesperson for the Rhino and Lion reserve, Frank Kelly, explains that Lea had been bought as a young cub by an Italian businessman. He raised her in his home, feeding her on pasta. When she got to be too much of a handful for the man, he took her to the zoo in Rome where she spent the last four years in a cement cage, still living on the only diet she knew - pasta. The zoo decided it could no longer afford to pay for her unusual diet and was receiving no more financial assistance from her original owner. She was put up for sale and when it came to the attention of the owners of the Rhino and Lion reserve that she was to be sold for so-called canned lion hunting, they stepped in and bought her for the reserve, which currently has 30 lions in residence. Lea will be kept in isolation at the until she adapts to living in the wild and will then have free rein of the reserve. Kelly is confident that Lea will adapt as the reserve has had experience with a number of lions bred in captivity. When TNN asked what would happen to Lea if she did not adapt, Kelly said he was quite happy to keep her in isolation and keep feeding her pasta if that's what it took. "South African hospitality is well-known in foreign circles and we extend it to all our guests," he said. (Adéle Mackenzie)