Suddenly, he threw off the blanket, uncovering a hunting rifle. He pointed it at me and the painting, and started yelling for everyone to get back and move away. Nobody screamed, and it immediately became clear that he wanted a picture of himself, aiming the rifle at the elephant! Security guards sauntered over and wanted a look at the rifle, but got the joke immediately, laughing and examining the old weapon, then giving it back to him. We took pictures, no problem, end of story. He went home and no arrests were made. He never came back to the mall either, but you never quite forget when a person aims a gun at you. Definitely a pre-9/11 kind of story!
At the end of the project, I put a few of the canvases around on display, which led to other commissions, a few shows, and a couple of sales. But the best part was meeting Jack Castor, the lion tamer at the San Francisco Zoo. Jack had heard about the portrait I painted of a tiger named "Sedova" through Rick Mannshardt, my giraffe photographer friend. Jack had been in the service, and seen action in Truk Lagoon in WWII (one of the deadliest fights of the war). He was blasted off the deck of a battleship and brought back to S.F. to recover for over a year. While recuperating, as a joke, a friend brought him a want ad from the paper for a "lion wrangler", saying "if you can survive Truk, you can handle this, no problem." Jack took the challenge seriously, and became the longest-running big cat employee at the zoo. Jack LOVED Sedova, and raised the cubs at home, which was unheard-of in the 1940s and '50s.
