The Philadelphia Zoo, the oldest in the United States, lost its last African lion the other day when Makini, a 17-year-old male, was euthanized due to advanced arthritis. According to a zoo news release, “With the loss of Makini, we are having active conversations with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan on the future of lions at Philadelphia Zoo.” That sounds like an evasive way of saying that future visitors will wonder where the lions are.
Folk singer Bruce Cockburn has had nearly two dozen top 40 singles in his native Canada, but “Wondering Where the Lions Are” is his only top 40 hit in the U.S., where it reached No. 21 in 1979. The Cold War was still going on, and the song sprang from a conversation he had about tensions between China and the USSR. He went to sleep worried and dreamt of lions at his front door, but unlike in an earlier dream about the big cats, these didn’t seem scary, and when he woke up to a world that wasn’t at war, he had the start of a song.
