Mother Nature at its Best (and Worst!!)

Ok, I admit it. I've been a slacker. We got back from Washington just a few days ago, ran down south for a friend's baby shower, then came back home and I got sick. Ethan was sick last week, and I thought I'd dodged the bullet, but.... either I caught his thing or found my own. Anyway, I'm emerging now to a much happier place and hoping the rest of us don't catch it.


I saw this great picture on Drudge the other day.  Apparently this dog recently weaned her own puppies and was willing to take on these little tiger cubs.  I was at first reminded of some of the inspiring stories that mother nature gives us: dolphins that hold their sick pod members at the surface to make breathing easier, herd members who place more vulnerable young in the center of the group to protect them, sometimes at great risk to themselves, bees who sting to ward off predatory attacks, always resulting in their own demise.... you get the idea.

We went to the zoo the same day, and I was reading about the gorillas there.  The sign mentioned that many of the female gorillas had been foster mothers to baby gorillas.... babies of other gorillas in the same exhibit who, for whatever reason, wouldn't care for their own babies.  Turns out these tiger cubs needed a surrogate mother not because of some tragic accident that happened to their own mother, but because she refused to take care of them.  They followed her around, and she ignored them and wouldn't feed them.  Then I started thinking about a few of the creepy things that animals do that don't make me feel so warm and fuzzy.  Refusing to care for your young is bad enough, but pales in comparison to EATING THEM, which many animals do.  And not just fish and ants (who also eat their young), but polar bears, rats, lions (when new males become dominant in a pride, they'll kill the young so the females can become pregnant sooner with their own offspring) and hamsters.  

Oh no!  Hamsters.  I just had a traumatizing flashback.  Many years ago my best friend had grand plans to get a hamster.  We went to the pet store together and they let us go into a special room in the back to see the cute little furless baby hamsters that had recently been born.  In just a short time, my friend would be able to go back to the store and get one of those cute little things (and it would be a lot cuter with fur!) and bring it home.  Can you guess what happened?  Mom ate the hamsters.  My friend did get a different, living hamster at some point, but I still remember the feeling of disgust when I heard the news.

I guess the point of all this is that mother nature is great and inspiring, and very, very creepy at times, too.

Here's a Deep Thought on the wonders of nature, just to wrap up my random musings.  Thanks, Jack Handey.  

Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant.  It's a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see.