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Elsa
(Most Famous Big Cat)
Elsa was a lion cub whose mother was shot by Kenyan Game Warden George Adamson in 1956. His wife, Joy, hand-reared the new-born cub. When the cub was 27 months old, she was set free in the game reserve. The Adamsons spent a year training Elsa to hunt. In 1959 she mated with a wild lion and gave birth to three cubs. When they were six weeks old she started to bring them back to the Adamson's camp even though she was living as a wild lioness. Unfortunately, she died prematurely of a parasitic infection, and the Adamsons took the cubs to the safety of the Serengeti game reserve.
Elsa was made famous by the book Born Free in 1960. There followed two films, one in 1965 and a sequel in 1972. Many other books have also been written about Elsa, and the rearing of a cheetah and a leopard by the Adamsons also.
Most of their lives, the Adamsons lived in close contact with big cats, but it was not lions that were to pose a threat to their lives, but mankind. Joy was murdered in 1980 by a servant she had dismissed. And sadly, in 1989 George was murdered by Somali bandits.