im Jablon will spend all of January inside an enclosure with two African lions as part of an effort to raise funds for a Florida wildlife rehabilitation centre struggling to meet operating costs. It seemed like a clever idea at first, he joked during an interview, but after the first four days he is not so sure. The cats -- a 2-year-old named Lea and a 1-year-old named Ed -- are young and playful, but they are also powerful and their caretaker sometimes feels over-matched.

"
I am still a toy to them," said Jablon, the longtime owner of Wildlife Rehabilitation of Hernando in Spring Hill, Florida. "They can be out cold and I will sneak up between them and lay down, but as soon as they realise I am there it is the battle of the bands. I can handle them even though they weigh 225-250 pounds, but once they get going and they realise it’s two-against-one, I usually end up on my back. In a "Good Morning America" special, Jablon was criticised by a spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation, who said Jablon was sending "
a bad message that it is OK to make pets out of wildlife." The NWF also has blogged about the project. The show also mentioned the 2003 mauling of Roy Horn, by a 7-year-old Bengal tiger, during one of Siegfried and Roy’s popular tiger shows in Las Vegas.
But Jablon, who does have a

"lockout area" in which he can find refuge if things get too rough, countered that he does not feel threatened by the lions and pointed out that if the facility were to shut down, animals that were not accepted by other facilities probably would be put to death. It costs about $75,000 annually to care for the 100 animals at the 14-acre centre and Jablon says car washes and other small-scale fund-raisers are no longer sufficient. He hopes people visiting his website and watching the streaming video will feel motivated to make a donation. He expects to raise between $100,000 and $200,000. Jablon also said that the lions, tigers, emus, horses, monkeys, reptiles and other creatures are not pets or show animals. They ended up at the rehab centre for various reasons and many probably faced death if facilities such as his did not exist. Lea, for example, was a "photo cub, meaning her previous owner had profited from the cub by charging people for photos with the animal at events such as state fairs. She became too large and potentially dangerous, and ended up at Jablon’s centre. Ed also needed a home and was obtained from his previous owner to become Lea’s companion. Jablon entered the enclosure at midnight New Year’s Eve. Though he has the lockout area as his private space, he stays inside the enclosure and spends most of his time with the lions. He showers with a hose. He eats when his lions eat, which is once a day. They are each fed 10-12 pounds of chicken and steak; he accepts whatever his 13-year-old daughter, Chelsea, brings him. Jablon sleeps when the lions sleep, in a sleeping bag on a bed of straw. Since the animals become active at night, Jablon has had to adjust his sleeping habits as well as his lifestyle habits, since he cannot take a hot shower or snack from the refrigerator. But that is not the worst of it. He has run the facility with a hands-on approach for 10 years, meaning he personally feeds and spends enrichment time with every animal. "I love having the time to spend with these cats but I have got 98 other animals that I enjoy spending time with every day and making sure they are happy, and right now I’ve got other people doing that," he said. "That’s the hardest part. I have a cougar that is 40 feet away and she loves me to death and she sits there and cries half the day because she can see me, but I cannot be with her. I have got spider monkeys all around and they can hear me and see me, but I am not coming over to say hi." Then there is the media frenzy. Jablon has been routinely visited by news crews and newspaper and website reporters. On Tuesday alone he conducted 12 radio interviews. "
I guess you could say it has been like a circus around here," he said.

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