|
Little
Tyke
was a vegetarian lioness who lived on a ranch in Hidden Valley,
California, surrounded by all her animal friends... including Becky
the lamb (shown below), thus seeming to fulfill the Biblical prophecy
"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie
down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling
together; and a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 11:6). |
She was born in captivity to a
mother who systematically killed all her newborn offspring. Badly mauled,
one day-old Little Tyke was rescued by brave zoo attendants who managed to
snatch her from the jaws of her mother, and given for adoption to George
and Margaret Westbeau who owned a ranch nearby.
To their great surprise and those of
experts, Little Tyke would never touch meat. Even if a single drop of
blood was mixed in her milk bottle, she would refuse it. After months of
unsuccessful attempts to trick her into eating a normal lion's fare, they
accepted the fact that she was a born vegetarian and fed her only a
mixture of ground grains cooked in milk and eggs.
To condition her
stomach, Little Tyke would spend an hour at a time eating the tall grass
in the fields--another striking reminder of
the prophecies of Isaiah 11:7 and 65:25,
"… the lion will eat straw like the ox."
Little Tyke had an exceptionally
gentle and loving nature, and all animal farms came to be petted by her
without any fear.
Little Tyke's story started to
spread in the Great Depression-ravaged America, giving spiritual hope and
renewed faith to people from all walks of life. She was taken on tour to
be shown to a public desperately hungry for love and innocence.
She died in Hollywood of stress-induced
pneumonia, while being filmed for a nation-wide television broadcast.
Her extraordinary story is
related in the book written by
George Westbeau, Little
Tyke: The Story of a Gentle Vegetarian Lioness, published by the
Theosophical Publishing House, IL, USA, 1986.
  
|
