This lion, which neither had a pride nor the care of a lioness once chanced upon a cheetah which had caught its prey but unable to kill it and eat it.
When the Cheetah saw the lion, he meekly left the moribund stag and left. This lion reached the stag and deftly clamped his mouth on the jugular of the dying stag and within seconds had started feasting on the stag for which he had neither laboured nor planned. To put it in biblical terms, “the lion had entered into the labours of the cheetah” (John 4:37)
The lion after satiating himself, left behind a considerable portion of the carcass which the cheetah, which was salivating for from afar, stealthily moved before the hyenas could reach and had its fill.
Said the Cheetah to itself in realisation: I was swift to catch the stag but I neither had the strength of a lion’s paw to pin it down nor its jaws & claws to rip the stag. What a great FINISHER.
Yeah, the Lion was a Finisher!
The lion which had snoozed for a greater part of that evening woke up to find the cheetah standing at an audible distance. The lion sleepily yawned and asked the Cheetah, if he had had the rest of the stag. The cheetah shouted back , YES SIR!
This was reassuring to the lion which not only believed in its own superiority but believed in the acknowledgement of the same by the other animals. The lion said: Anyway, you would not have killed the stag had I not intervened.
The cheetah replied: yes sir, the drain in my energy would have been more than the gain.
The Lion liked the rhyme besides the truthful acceptance instead of a claim over the stag as the first capturer!
Now the lion and the cheetah are great friends.
The cheetah’s speed brings the quarry down and the imperial lion takes over the prey for its warm blood and its lion’s share.
This symbiosis had a threat in the form of a lioness, which this Lion tracked after a year of that incident. The lioness and the lion raised a family and in due course the Cheetah was being left with mere bones despite his usual speed in bringing down the quarry.
The lioness has been busy with its cubs and was a lil sluggish too. Where leisure and time comes one’s meal, Mischief spawns. The lioness asked the lion: why have your friend, that emaciated cheetah hanging around, when you are so powerful and strong? Why share your quarry with that tear marked sprinter?
The Lion though knew that it was the Cheetah which gave the chase and brought down the quarry, was shy of admitting it before his woman.
The Lion said, YEAH WHY SHOULD I?
The lion told the cheetah of the lioness’ opinion and wanted him to move out.
Till date, neither the Pride has had it so good as before, nor the Sprinting Cheetah.
Though disparate in skills & power, well matched alliances of skills and power synergise to accomplish great tasks with ease.