Lion around

As you will have no doubt already seen, there are reports of a lion on the loose in Essex (or on the 'lose' in Essex according to many misspelt tweets, like he was having a bad night at a casino or something).

When news of this started to trickle in late last night, Twitter seemed to explode into a big cat frenzy. Somehow, the idea of a giant beast prowling round a populated part of England captured the imagination and led to a spike in tweets - mainly jokes about lions, most of which were paw.

See, even now I can't help myself. But I'm trying, that's the mane thing. Emotions are still roar. Lion? No I'm serious.

So just why did the image of a potential killer freely roaming the streets appeal to the average tweeter so much? Will he be this year's Raul Moat, where some people help him evade capture for a couple of weeks before he takes a final stand, threatening to bite himself to death?

I don't suppose we'll ever know fur sure, but let's paws for thought and chew over a couple of potential reasons for the popularity of this topic.

If your upbringing was anything like mine, your childhood would have been full of stories about animals escaping from the zoo or circus (as well as some 'stranger danger' ones where bad people from the circus did very improper things to young children, but we won't consider those just now).

I mean, in one famous story, a tiger actually came round for tea for crying out loud!

Escaped animals were a source of excitement and fascination. Plus they may even lead to mum getting out the best crockery and baking some homemade cakes. In all the stories I was ever read about escaped animals, not one went and even did a little bit of shoplifting, let alone mauled innocent people to death.

The closest I ever came to experiencing a wild animal coming to tea, was when a cow escaped from the local cattle market just down the road from where I lived. It ran up the road and crashed through a neighbour's window into their living room. I remember being genuinely disappointed that it didn't make it slightly further up to our house. However, I later found out than rather watch a bit of tv whilst eating dainty grass sandwiches, it was actually destroyed in an almighty mess of blood & cow poo. So it was probably for the best.

So, I reckon this rogue beast has reignited the excitement and wonder each of us has rarely felt since childhood. A kind of innocence towards danger - something that we try and recreate in adulthood with scary theme park rides and horror movies.

But it's not only that. The other reason I think the lion tweets were spreading like wildfire was the myriad of possibilities for joke tweets. Not only did you have the roar material of the lion to work with (puns by the ton), but he was strolling round Essex - a hotbed of stereotypes ready to be worked into the jokes too.

So we had tweets mentioning that he was actually a female snow leopard who'd overdone the fake tan and had excessive hair extensions. Some clever wag questioned just how far he'd be able to make it in white stilettos. And then there was something about a vajazzle, but thankfully I can't remember the punchline on that one.

The whole scenario had suddenly offered everyone the potential to become a comedian. Who cared whether there really was a lion on the loose? The imagery was funny whether it had a basis in truth or not. There always seemed to be one more joke to get your teeth into.

Given that at the time of writing there are only a couple of eyewitness reports and one photograph of such poor quality that even experts at the zoo can't determine if it shows a lion or not, there's still a fair chance that this is all just the result of a couple of people having had one too many drinks anyway.

But there's no denying it transformed an average Sunday night on Twitter into quite a circus. At times of national hardship and despondency, releasing wild creatures into urban areas may well do wonders to lift the public mood. In the absence of any more Olympics / royal weddings / jubilees, monkeys riding zebras could be just what the country needs.

EDIT: The search for the lion was called off by police this afternoon after no trace of it was found. I need to do something to get the same buzz as last night though. Going to report to police that I've just seen a pterodactyl. Good luck spelling that Twitter!