It was another 3 a.m. start for Asuka Takita on March 7 and, bleary-eyed, she jumped into her jeep and set off on another journey to where the wild things are. "In the afternoon I could not keep my eyes open during work," Takita later revealed on her Facebook page, "so I decided to take a 30-minute power nap next to another guy who was having his siesta. He was still fast asleep when I woke up."

Takita insists that she is not in the habit of taking forty winks next to strange men, but this was no ordinary guy. In fact, he was a lion.

The king of the jungle is among the many acquaintances of Japan-born Takita since she made Kenya her home almost a decade ago. Then, she took up the post of veterinarian at the Mara Conservancy, a nonprofit company contracted by Kenya's Narok County to manage a 510-square-kilometer portion of the Maasai Mara game reserve known as the Mara Triangle.