The image is enough any parent's heart stop.
The young girl sits calmly, as if nothing is wrong, completely unaware of the danger
from the leopard lurking close by.
And this is not about leopard but with many wild animals.
With unshakeable courage, she sits next to the animal.
To her, the ferocious beast is just like any other house cat she's seen.
But this six-year-old isn't an ordinary kid: she sits on the board of her own company and
is already a successful author.
This is Tippi Degré, a girl whose life is straight out of the jungle book.
Tippi was born in Namibia in 1990, the daughter of French wildlife shutter bugs, Sylvie Robert
and Alain Degré.
Named for the actress Tippi Hedren, she spent the first decade of her existence on an incredible
adventure in the African Bush.
While her parents were busy snapping photographs and touring through countries, such as Zimbabwe,
Botswana, and South Africa, Tippi was free to make friends with everything and everyone
she encountered.
This led to some unusual friendships, as the young girl forged connections with the veritable
menagerie of wild animals.
Her everyday life Sylvie told the mail online, “was making sure monkeys did not steal her
bottle”.
It's easy to see why comparisons with Mowgli have been made.
Tippi spent her formative years living in a tent with her family.
At a time when other girls her age were playing with toys and watching Disney movies, she
was spending her days among elephants, crocodiles, Giraffes, and big cats.
Tippi, and her family believed that she had a natural talent for communicating with the
animals.
Because she had lived around them her entire life, she showed no fear of them.
“Tippi always said that everybody was gifted and this was her gift”, Sylvie told the
Telegraph.
She was in the mindset of these animals.
She believed the animals were her size and her friends.
When she was just one and a half years old, Tippi met an African elephant known as Abu.
Yet far from being intimidated by the gigantic animal.
The little girl saw him as her equal.
Later she would refer to Abu as her brother.
It was in the girl's interactions with Abu that Sylvie noticed tippy seeming ability
to communicate with the animals around her.
“She would look into his eyes and speak to him”, She recalled.
Blessed with such an amazing source of inspiration Tippy’s parents captured some incredible
photographs of the young girl and her animal friends.
They snapped her sitting a stride in ostrich, playing with a rock Python, and riding through
the swamps on Abu’s neck.
Other photos showed Tippi stroking a friendly baboon cuddling up to meercats.
And in one particularly striking image, sleeping next to a lion Cub, which is suckling on her
hand.
Although many parents would balk at the idea of letting their child get so close to wild
animals, Sylvie insists that Tippi was never in danger.
She explained, “farmers often keep orphan animals and raise them in their house.
Sometimes they are tame and used to animals.
And so this is how Tippi was able to be so close with them”.
But there were a few hair-raising moments.
Once Tippi was nipped at on the nose twice by a meercat.
Another incident involved the lion Cub she was photographed with, Mufasa.
Having returned to see him a year after the photo was shot.
Sylvie found the lion's friendly behaviour toward Tippi, a little too boisterous and
had to remove the little girl.
There was also the time when Cindy, the baboon tore out a chunk of tippy hair and a jealous
fit.
That was terribly painful, admitted Sylvie.
Wild animals are unpredictable.
It wasn't just animals that tippy befriended in her explorations of the African Bush though,
while her parents were shooting footage of the hunter gatherer, sand Bushman in Namibia,
the little girl bonded with the local children.
Yet although tippy made plenty of friends in the Bush where her blonde locks and white
skin were a novelty.
She struggled to acclimatize when her family went back to metropolitan life, age 10 Tippi
left the Wonderland of her childhood to move with her mom and dad to an apartment in Paris.
“She missed the animals so much”, Sylvie told the male online.
We didn't have room for a dog in her flat.
So we got a buggy instead, Tippi adored the small bird and according to Sylvie, he was
the only friend she had.
Eventually however, Tippi adjusted the life away from the wild.
She's now age 25 and her explorations have involved studying for a film degree and working
to raise public awareness of the special relationship between animals and humans.
She has also written a book about her childhood published in 2012.
In Tippi, my book of Africa, she reminisces about her magical childhood growing up alongside
some of the world's rarest and most beautiful animals.
She can often share amazing experiences with animals during their time in the wild.
Tippi says that she was able to communicate with them through her mind, heart, or soul
and they would understand.
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