A friend was in Chicago on a business trip these past few days, so we made plans to meet up last Saturday and walked around Lincoln Park Zoo together.
We started at the outdoor lion area, but there wasn’t a single lion in sight. After wandering around for a while and circling back, we realized you could also view the lions from indoors, watching them through a glass window.
We walked into the indoor viewing area, turned a corner, and there they were: a male and a female lion. We got lucky and ended up in the front row, with only a pane of glass between us and the lions. As the crowd slowly gathered behind us, the two of them sauntered leisurely down from the fake rock formation. Then the king of beasts opened his jaws, baring his fangs with a fierce look, and the whole crowd gasped in awe.
I can’t remember if this was actually my first time seeing a lion, but it was definitely the closest I’ve ever been to one: his thick paws padding against the ground, his mane looking coarse and wonderfully full, his mouth opening to reveal sharp teeth, utterly majestic, and honestly kind of terrifying. I found myself with newfound respect for Daniel, who was thrown into the lions’ den. He wasn’t eaten, sure, but how did he not get scared to death?1
He circled around a few more times right in front of us, then suddenly stopped and lifted a leg. Shrieks and laughter erupted behind us at the same moment: yes, he was peeing, and aiming straight at the glass. If it hadn’t been for that pane of glass, I was standing close enough in the front row to have gotten sprayed head to toe (This moment, however precious, I let go unfilmed).
After the male lion finished his business, the female behind him walked down from the rock formation toward the dripping-wet glass. At the last critical second… she just sniffed it and walked away. Thank goodness she didn’t lick it, or the crowd behind me might have actually rioted.
My previous impression of lions came entirely from movies and cartoons: a mighty image I understood only in the abstract, without it ever feeling real. Actually visiting the zoo and seeing a real lion baring its teeth and claws right in front of me made me genuinely feel his presence and majesty, and I noticed goosebumps rising on my arms. That’s a reaction I could never have gotten just from understanding the concept of “lion” in my head.
Are there other things like this, things we know about only as concepts, but have never actually experienced? Maybe we all need to take an actual trip to the zoo sometime, and go see a real big kitty.
NB: This article was first published in Chinese on 06/22/26. It was later translated with assistance from AI tools, edited by me, and published in English on 07/16/26.
From the Book of Daniel in the Bible. ↩︎