Remember Cecil the Lion, the sage 13-year-old lion from Zimbabwe who was shot by some dentist from Minnesota and everyone freaked the fuck out? Well Cecil is still dead and guess what? Now his son is too.
*GASP*
Yes, I know. Take a moment, I’ll wait. Have you collected yourself? Oh, no? Take a few more minutes. Damn, are you still crying? It’s fine, it’s just... well, I need to finish writing this blog.
Cecil’s six-year-old son, whose name was Xanda, was shot by trophy hunters in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. He reportedly had been a father to several cubs himself. But according to scientist Andrew Loveridge from Oxford University, who had fitted Xanda with a tracking collar to study Hwange lions in the wild, the private hunter Richard Cooke who killed Xanda was “one of the good guys.”
“He is ethical and he returned the collar and communicated what had happened,” Loveridge told reporters. “His hunt was legal and Xanda was over six years old so it is all within the stipulated regulations.”
When Cecil was killed he apparently had “13 surviving sons and daughters and 15 known grandcubs.”
Richard Cooke, who I can only imagine was scared shitless when he learned he had brutally murdered the son of a beloved Internet-famous lion, did not respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.