Young animals in the wild have little time to frolic or have fun, unlike the human world or captivity. Dangers creep out in all directions, and if a cub fails to adapt, they perish.

In February 2012, a baby lion was discovered near a farm in Botswana. This little cub was clearly suffering from a terrible malady. Helpless without her family, she was severely dehydrated and starving. Needless to say, she was on death’s door.

The little cub wasn’t alone when they found her near the farm. Her two siblings had been found nearby, but it was too late for them. She was the only survivor, but as such, her chances of coming back around were slim and getting slimmer. 

Nursing the cub back to health would not be enough for her to survive—not if she was to reclaim her hunting grounds, as her rescuers intended for her—rather than persist in captivity. The long-term plan for her rehabilitation would be a back-and-forth effort.

When Valentin and the rest of the team found her, she weighed only four pounds. As the co-founder of the Modisa Wildlife Project in Kalahari, he felt a particular responsibility to bring the cub back to a stable state. But her problems had been beyond their powers to mend.

The little cub would need more than a little food and water. To bring her back from the edge, they immediately put her on a strict diet of eggs, milk, cream, sunflower oil, calcium, and vitamins. She began to show some signs of improvement—but it wasn’t a guarantee. 

The little cub started to get better. With good signs of recovery and some optimism, her rescuers decided to name her while they nursed her back to full health. They settled on “Sirga.” Soon, she began finding her own strength and steadily built back a will to live.

Sirga tugged everyone’s heartstrings and shocked them with her fast return to vitality. The IV drip and special diet had worked their magic—even so, the vets and the team at the Modisa Wildlife Project almost couldn’t believe her level of tenacity. 

After a full year of recovery—and after gaining a staggering 170 pounds—Sirga had experienced an incredible amount of growth. Valentin and the team acknowledged that it was time for her to get off her baby diet and onto the kind of food she would be expected to hunt in the wild.

After another two years, Sirga had almost tripled her size since being found as a cub near the Botswana farm by the Modisa Wildlife Project. She treated everyone there like her new pride. After all, they had been the ones to nurse her to health and protect her when she needed it most.

The one person not intimidated by her, no matter how big she would get, was Valentin. Since he wasn’t afraid to get up close and personal, it made sense that he would be her primary carer. And it seemed that she recognized him as the one who had saved her.

From the size of these animals, it’s easy for people to assume that they are killing machines through and through, but in reality, much of a lion’s free time, when not out hunting, is spent lounging and playing with the family. In this sense, Sirga was no different.

It wasn’t always playtime between Valentin and Sirga. As well as teaching her the limits when it came to hugs and play, Valentin would also need to coach her on how to become an adult lion. Human parents have a hard enough time getting their kids to grow into human adults—imagine having to raise a lion!

Along with the rest of the team, Valentin began coaching her back into her natural habitat. If Valentin ever felt sentimental about her growing up, it would be nothing compared to the emotion and energy required to get her back on track.

Sirga needed no encouragement to get back out into the desert, where she belonged. When she wasn’t playing, she became bored. Even during playing, it was obvious that the “soft” play wasn’t giving her the stimulation she needed. It was time for her to graduate.

While the hunting instinct is inherent in every lion, the skills of hunting are not. They are something that cubs pick up from the seasoned members of the pride. Without honing these skills, Sirga would have a hard time surviving by herself. It was critical that she would learn the ways of the hunter.

All students of any subject learn at different speeds. This is no different for lions. She absorbed expertise from each lesson at different rates. Slowly, she was getting it. Although she began slow, she quickly got up to speed.

From day one, Valentin and the others intended to have Sirga reintroduced to the wild. They didn’t want to simply pacify animals to the gawking amusement of visitors at the zoo. They wanted a life for her out in the real world.

In an interview, Valentin said that he intended to “release her eventually as a wild lion, not as one who has met lots of people,” adding, “That would be dangerous.” Sirga would be an easy target for other predators if she were released without plenty of hunting experience. 

The story of a man raising a lion couldn’t exactly be kept secret for very long. Much of Valentin and Sirga’s story would be captured by Jurgen Jozefowicz, who planned to turn their experience into a miniseries called Saving Sirga: Journey Into The Heart Of A Lion. 

The lesson to be learned from Sirga and Valentin’s relationship is that love can transcend barriers that most of us would not think possible. While it wouldn’t be possible to befriend a lion, it speaks to the capacity that all life has for not only survival—but for cooperation and respect.