Possibly The Best Show-And-Tell Ever! Russian Kids Take Lion Cub To School

Lately my daughter has been begging me to let her take a Bess beetle home from class. Her teacher has offered the beetles to the class because the children are done studying them. I’m a mean mom, we already have a dog and a cat and as much as my daughter claims she will care for this beetle, I’m the one who is going to end up feeding it (they eat wood) and cleaning its little habitat for the whole 16 or so months of its life. Bugs can be cool and I’m glad she has an interest in science, but I have zero interest in keeping an insect as a pet. Why can’t she be like these students in the Rostov region of Russia who found a 5-month-old lion cub and brought it to school?

From the Sacramento Bee:

Children in the Rostov region found the 5-month old cub on the steppe Wednesday and brought it to their teacher, who kept it in the school gym, police said Thursday.

While waiting for police, children petted and played with the cub, named Barsik. One boy even tried to ride it like a horse while it mewled and swiped at the air.

The cub had escaped from a car on the way to a zoo in Dagestan in the North Caucasus. It has now been removed from the school and placed in a local zoo.

 

Awwww and awwww! The poor thing was probably terrified and I’m sure the teachers had their hands full keeping the kids away from the lion cub, but how seriously amazingly cool would it be to get to pet a lion cub? I play this game with my kids all the time, where we discuss how flippin’ cool it would be to have an exotic animal in our house. I want a lion and a baby elephant and a shark and a baby tiger and a baby hippo.

Yes, one should never ever keep an exotic animal as a pet and it will always end badly and animals deserve to be in their natural habitats or at the very least, a prefabricated habitat where they can be cared for properly but you can’t tell me that you have never wanted to pet and cuddle a baby lion. Come on! It’s like the majority of everyone’s number two on their Top Ten Fantasy List Of Amazing Things That Will Probably Never Happen.

Watching the video posted above, I am all too annoyed at the kid trying to ride the lion cub. These are not for riding, they are for kissing and petting and growing up and mauling the awful people who try and keep them as pets. I wish my daughter had a better option of animals to being home than a giant beetle. Why can’t they study tigers and lions and panda bears in science class!

(photo: Heiko Kiera /shutterstock)