Nothing is more powerful than the bond you share with your animal, especially if you helped raise them.
People devote their entire lives to helping animals out of pure love, and Kevin Richardson is one such person.
He once saw a mother lion reject two of her newborn pups while he was working at the Lion Park in South Africa. Some might have been afraid to approach the couple, but Kevin knew better.
He decided to give the cubs a better chance of survival by putting them in a wildlife park rather than allowing them to be taken and kept in cages.
The center’s aim was to raise these cubs in a way that would enable them to develop into independent adults without human assistance.
Seven years later, Kevin made the decision to give Meg and Ammy a visit. He was understandably anxious about their reaction.
Watch the moving moment for yourself in the video below:
They hadn’t seen each other in a while, and he wasn’t sure if they would still recognize him.
Kevin made the decision to approach the lions without thinking twice, and luckily for us, he captured the encounter on camera using a GoPro.
He made the decision to jump in and go after her while calling her name while one of the lions was by the water.
“When I call Meg and she comes swimming and I see in her face, ‘If I come to you are you going to catch me?’.”
“She looks at me, I look at her, and we know. That’s trust.”
What followed was quite amazing; as soon as she understood who Kevin was, she dove into the water and gave him a bear hug.
They will always share this unique bond no matter how long they are separated, according to Kevin, who refers to them as his “soul mates.”
He continued by describing how, over the course of their time together, the cubs came to trust him so completely:
“To see the lions doing what lions do for me was exhilarating. It made me realize there was a different way to work with these predators in captivity. Meg and Amy and me have a history that goes to when they were born.”
Kevin believed that Meg and Amy were “destined for a bullet” by trophy hunters and that they would have ended up in the canned lion hunting market if he had never given birth to them.
Kevin, also known as the “lion whisper,” established the “Kevin Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary,” an African savanna sanctuary for 3,000 lions. He cares for 26 lions of various ages, including Meg and Amy, many of whom he knew as pups.