A Different Kind of Beast

Any man who wears cow dung and fish glue as perfume to impress his chick must be really wacked out. And if Salvador Dali happened to be that guy, you’d expect nothing lesser. Talking of Mr. Dali, the story goes that, one day, he walked into a restaurant in Manhattan with his pet in tow. A lady seated nearby panicked as it looked like a real leopard. Dali soothed her frayed nerves by informing her that he had done some optical art on his cat to make it look like a leopard. She was gullible enough to buy his yarn. Little did she know that his pet ‘Babou’ was an ocelot or a dwarf leopard from Colombia!

The surrealist painter was neither the first nor the last chap to pet a bizarre animal. A few years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio zapped everyone by showing up at the American Reptile Breeders Conference and Trade Show. He had hopped over to buy ‘Jack’, a 10-year-old tortoise that weighed 17 Kgs. Wonder if the tort is now playing ‘Catch Me If You Can’ with Leo.

In comparison, George Clooney went the whole hog when he shared his bed, home and life for 18 full years with a Vietnamese black bristled potbellied pig called ‘Max the Star’. David Beckham is another superstar with a fascination for the swine. He has two micro-pigs sportingly named after his family friends Elton John and David Furnish. Joining the pig-heads is Miley Cyrus. She was gifted ‘Nora’ by PETA on her 20th birthday. Ever since our lady has been ‘wrecking balls’ either twerking or booty shaking.

Mike Tyson and Michael Jackson were made of sterner stuff. At different points in time, they had tigers as pals when the world preferred pooches. Michael Jackson’s Bengal tigress was ‘Thriller’ and Tyson’s went by the name ‘Kenya’.

‘Legally Blonde’ starlet Reese Witherspoon’s best buddies are donkeys ‘Honky’ and ‘Tonk’, and goats ‘Booker T Washington’ and ‘Lavender Valentine’. Charlie Sheen, in contrast, has a lizard as his pal that goes by the name ‘Hopper Jr’. While Kirsten Stewart spends all her twilights with her wolf dogs ‘Jack’, ‘Lily’, ‘Tommy’ and ‘Lola’. If dinosaurs had been around, I bet, someone would have petted them too.