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From the start he was thrown in at the deep-end when the head keeper just handed him a pail of steaks and hustled him through the gates of the enclosure The thinking was that, since he was Jewish and not Christian, the lions would not have a taste for him Roth was dubious, but complied   The way to be was fearless but non-confrontational ‘Show them who is boss’ was the mantra Keepers before him had felt the temptation to become pally with the lions, to try and become friends with them They had paid the price So: ‘Show them who is boss’ They had filed into the lecture theatre to have a seminar right at the beginning of their terms at the zoo At the front a bushy-faced keeper had given them a brief talk on precisely this subject The talk was entitled ‘Show them who is Boss’ They had shown clips from Grizzly Man, mainly the sequences from just before Treadwell’s death The elderly keeper had stood guffawing at the back He was an ex-Kossack He was a traditionalist when it came to death The lions sat in the cages Roth had been told that the more intelligent the lion the more impossible he could be The more mangy, the more bedraggled and lazy-eyed and ghetto-looking the lion, the less you should worry Those lions weren’t intelligent enough to be mean Roth put his shoulders back every day and strode, like Clinton, into the enclosure The point was about body language They had to know that he wasn’t a man to mess with He looked out into the audience sometimes to see the anxious crowds, anxious for him Inside his head, he snorted at them Inside his head, he tossed his head What he had come to realize was that the lions were less interested in him than each other This realization came as a relief If he ever got knocked about it was usually an accident The day-to-day challenge was not to tame them; the day-to-day challenge was to get them at