Best Life Magazine, September 22, 2007
If he hadn’t been savaged by a lion, Steven Austad might never have discovered the elasticity of aging. Just out of college, he became friends with a lion trainer who rented animals to movie studios. Soon he was in Hollywood, working with exotic felines. One morning, he was walking Orville, a 300-pound lion, when a duck darted out from some reeds. The 2-year-old lion pounced, and Austad disciplined the big cat with a slap on the head. Orville released the duck, but then pounced on Austad. He knocked Austad down and sunk his teeth into Austad’s knee. Austad didn’t struggle because he knew lions are possessive of their food and Orville might lunge for his neck next. So he waited…for 15 minutes…with the lion gnawing on his leg. Finally, another trainer spotted him and sprayed Orville with a fire extinguisher. Austad spent six days in the hospital and realized that he needed to find a safer, more rewarding way to work with animals. He became a biologist and traveled the world, ending up on the remote savannas of Venezuela, studying a less frisky animal, the opossum. Continue reading “Could He Live to 2150?”