A Family From Texas Had A Lion As A Pet

Sunday, November 26, 2017

A Family From Texas Had A Lion As A Pet

From: Robert S.

Sent: November 26, 2017

To: undisclosed recipients

Subject: Fw: A Family From Texas Had A Lion As A Pet

A family in Texas in 1953 had a pet lion named Blondie

In 1955, LIFE photographer Joseph Scherschel, who had made a career photographing everyone from JFK to Che Guevara, travelled to central Texas to find a family with an unusual pet. Blondie, an African lioness who was purchased by oilman Charles Hipp from the Dallas Zoo, was enough of a usual sight around Graham, Texas, that word got around to one the most popular weekly magazines in the country. The article in LIFE, titled "Living Room Lion – Blondie, A Docile 200-Pound Texan,
Becomes A Member of the Family," gave readers a peek into the lives of the Hipp family's everyday lion-owning life. According to Mike Cox, who wrote about playing with Blondie in Port Isabel as a young boy on TexasEscapes.com, Hipp was a circus worker, who took to the oil patch in search of a more lucrative career. Cox wrote that in an interview with one of Hipp's granddaughters, Blondie mauled Hipp's own grandson in 1962, but that the lion was so much a part of the family she continued to live with Hipp until she died in 1968. ...

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