What do you get when you cross a Kruger Park lion with a Mozambican refugee?
SIMBA sighed. He had not had a pleasant day. That snivelling jackal of a lawyer had informed him that he could not get money out of the film studios for their hugely successful biography of his life.
Ah well, he thought. It had been well worth it. Not only had he persuaded the world outside that he was a noble king of the beasts, but had also managed to further besmirch the reputations of those hyenas.
Earlier in the week, he had finally snapped and begun to feast on that annoying meerkat and malodorous warthog who had insisted on cavorting drunkenly about him, breaking the peace of the African noon with that dreadful singing.
Unfortunately, the hyena pack — still smarting from the after effects of his propaganda exercise — had chosen that time to dispose of the notion that they were merely underhanded scavengers.
Chuckling heartily with an arrogance bolstered by their numbers, they very quickly crowded him out of the way and proceeded to dispose of the warthog with crunches of satisfaction.
Worse still, their irritating leader had cackled with glee as she demonstrated her dominance over the pack, claiming to be more of a man than he was. Oh, the sheer ignominy!
It wasn't really his fault. Lionesses only came into heat once in several months. He and his mate would then go at it hammer and tongs some 60 times that day, when suddenly she would turn around and snap at him.
The ensuing months would be dull. His lionesses would ignore him, going out to hunt for food, during which time he would sneak outside his territory, raping strange lionesses and killing anyone else's cubs that he could find. That was the way of things, his father had taught him between fetid burps when he was not trying to kill him.
Then along came that sodding hyena, with her outrageous emasculating theories about nurturing matriarchal communal societies. What on earth was the jungle coming too?
Fortunately, his mate had not taken to those ideas other than occasionally flipping him onto his back. "Air-headed blonde," he thought approvingly. Not like those snooty cows at Timbavati who thought themselves to be rare and exotic creatures destined for stardom.
The sound of a video camera roused him and he snarled wearily in the direction of the tourist wielding it, who fled for cover. "I get no respect," he thought as he got to his feet and staggered off in the direction of the Kremetart watering hole.
He was hungry too. Where were those bloody lionesses?
A rustling in the bushes ahead startled him. Five creatures flung themselves past him, making a beeline for a nearby mopani tree. One of them stepped on his tail and he swatted at it angrily. It fell over and lay still.
A lioness walked over. "Now what have you done?" said she with a look of utter contempt.
He drew himself up huffily. "I've fixed dinner," he said.
She was about to retort when her sister whispered: "It probably tastes vile, but let's eat it anyway, or he'll sulk even more..."
Five Kruger National Park lions that killed four Mozambicans attempting to enter South Africa illegally were put down on Monday.
The National Parks Board said the pride attacked and ate their fourth victim in the Pafuri/Punda Maria camp area in the northern part of the park.
A park warden said: "Our experience with lions is that, once they have tasted human flesh, they don't stop."
A postmortem revealed human remains — including a purse and sneakers — in the stomachs of the lions.