There are some things that you should never do, especially while drunk. Like, for example, enter a literal lion’s den. 

Meet Mukesh. Mukesh is 35, and works as a laborer for a railroad company and, on Sunday, had a lot to drink, according to the Hindu. At some point during his journey of intoxication he thought he wanted to shake a lion’s hand.

This was convenient, since Mukesh was drunk at a zoo. And so he did something that, in the moment, may have seemed rational: Mukesh jumped into the Nehru Zoological Park’s lion enclosure. 

“Please come to me my darling, please,” he told the animals, according to the Hindu.

They did not come. Instead a nearby trainer beckoned the animals with food, and a video of the incident shows the two lions running away from Mukesh, who was then helped out of enclosure with the help of park security. 

“When asked to explain his actions, he said he wanted to see the lion up close and shake its hand,” a police official named Harish Kaushik matter-of-factly told the Hindu. “We will question him again after he sobers up.”

The animals likely didn’t attack because they live in a zoo, used to having human handlers, officials said. 

“Mukesh was lucky that he got away,” an official told the Hindu. ”He was completely drunk when he jumped in.”

Mukesh likely woke up this morning with a throbbing headache, and maybe still wondering if that strange dream he had about meeting a lion was in fact reality.