A Circus lion spent 13 long years performing with a traveling circus and had spent most of his life in a cramped up cage, often denied the opportunity to be able to live a normal life.
But that all changed for the said Circus lion when he was rescued from his handlers and taken to a sanctuary where he finally got to experience the feeling of having soil and grass underneath his paws.
A video released by the Rancho dos Gnomos Santuário in Brazil back in May shows Will enthusiastically scratching his paws on the soft soil, happily rolling around the grass and having a brief moment of relaxation after having felt a sense of tranquility for the first time in his life.
The footage was filmed back in 2006 and was released eight years later. Will eventually passed away in 2011, five years after he was rescued. However, the owner of the sanctuary managed to see the bright side of it.
"He had five years of tranquility before he died. Here he had the opportunity to interact with other lions. He loved to lie in grass and look at the sky. He was a very happy lion," Marcos Pompeo, the sanctuary's founder, told The Dodo.
He can be seen in the opening scenes of the sanctuary's video below.
