St. Petersburg's public movement adopts a lion

The political public movement Petersburg's Will, which is headed by Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov, has adopted an Indian lion called Nerfi, who lives in the St. Petersburg Zoo.

The movement officially declared the lion adopted at an official ceremony on Thursday, with Mironov inaugurating a new cage for the lion and personally throwing him a piece of meat.

After the ceremony, the speaker announced that every party and movement should take a zoo, an orphanage, or a park under their patronage. "That would really help support our culture," he said.

A source in the St. Petersburg Zoo, which has today more than 2,000 animals, told journalists that the so-called "adoption" means financing, mostly that of food expenses. In fact, the money that the municipal authorities allocate for the Zoo is enough to cover current expenses and minor repairs here and there, but is positively not enough to pay for expensive food for the lion, who must be fed six times a week. In the first two days, he gets a total of twelve kilograms of meat; the next two days, it is two rabbits weighing about 4.5 kilograms each; the next two days it's 3 kilograms of fish /cod or hunchback salmon/ and 2-3 chickens; the last day is a "fasting" day.