This column originally ran on April 30, 2008.Â
When the Lincoln Children's Zoo opened this spring without Leo the Paper Eating Lion, rumors began to flow, like beer at Barry's after Nebraska's big Spring Game victory.
Some speculated our beloved Leo, with his goofy smile and peerless suction, had been part of behind-the-scenes maneuvering in the Nebraska State Fair move.
We'll give you the lion if you'll just take the damn racing pigs out of town. Deal?
Others believed the 2015 Vision group, eager to leave behind all traces of old Lincoln, had deemed Leo "too small-town" and had turned him into an avant garde sculpture for its arts and humanities pillar.
Fortunately for the citizenry, they were wrong.
Six days after the zoo opened for the 2008 season, Leo was back, tucked around the corner from the Safari Cafe and the new Dromedary Docking Station, talking to himself, same as always.
People are also reading…
Hi, boys and girls! I'm Leo the Paper Eating Lion. Paper! Paper! Paper! I just loooove paper!
He sounded as happy as a lion trapped for 43 years in a wooden circus wagon could sound.
And he looked, well, more fabulous than ever.
It seems Leo had simply been off having a little work done.
A nip. A few tucks. Some Bondo holding up the lips.
Think Joan Rivers, but with a better plastic surgeon.
Donna Necas, owner of Sign Post, had Leo under wraps for six weeks, performing his makeover.
"How has he aged?" Donna asked. "Like we all do."
"The only thing that's original is the fiberglass face, and it was pretty bad this time around."
When the zoo opened in 1965, Leo was there, a taut young lion, gobbling litter from the tiny hands of children.
He didn't do much talking then (although he did have a mechanical roar).
His lips were puffy and cartoonish, like Britney after a collagen overdose.
And his name was less peppy - an archived postcard referring to him as the slightly more Joe Friday-like: "Leo the Lion Paper Eater."
Discreetly updated, he's been at our service ever since.
Sucking up all the zoo's litter, without ever sucking up an entire child.
"Everybody loves Leo," director John Chapo said.
Leo was a document shredder before identity theft had a name.
He's "eaten" his share of Kleenex, gorged on cash register receipts, devoured deposit slips torn into a dozen pieces by paper-harangued mothers.
Inside Leo, a green nylon net - emptied three times daily - collects the zoo's paper, along with the occasional dirty diaper and half-eaten hot dog.
Necas has worked over the zoo's icon behind closed doors before.
This time, the makeover was top to bottom.
The lines in Leo's fiberglass face filled. A new, candy-colored paint job to mirror the old one, applied by Mural Mural graphics.
His wagon, with its four faux wheels, fortified.
"We took some steps to make him hold up longer this time, hopefully," Donna said.
Before Leo was delivered to the shop, the zoo director wondered if maybe they should modernize him.
Was he kidding?
"My staff thought I was committing heresy.
And so Leo changed, but only enough to make people pause, wondering: Had Leo had his eyebrows plucked? Maybe his mane colored?
And a good thing it was, because in Leo's absence, it became clear how much people love Leo.
Just the way Leo is.
It's almost May, and all day long, Leo is at the zoo, pleading for his paper.
Doug Ault, the zoo's facility manager, hears Leo as he works keeping the zoo running.
I'm Leo the Paper Eating Lion. Roooarrrr! Oh, don't be scared, all I eat is paper.
After eight years, he's almost got Leo's spiel memorized.
"Pretty soon, you're talking to it. Paper. Paper. Paper. Over and over and over."
That Leo.
So dependable. So Lincoln.