Copping Out

Today was the last day of school. This week has been ridiculously busy as I may have mentioned a time or two. I don't know why teachers and room moms feel the need to cram as much activity as humanly possible into those last seven days. It's stupid and stressful. So anyway, my brain is fried and my heart has been wrung a thousand different ways. As a result, I got nothing more to offer that is of any consequence.

So I'm going to cop out by posting a picture that I ran accross yesterday. But it's not just gratuitous cuteness. There is a message, I think. Maybe some of you have seen it. If not, let me tell you the story behind it.

At a zoo in California, a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and died shortly after birth. They were simply too tiny to survive.

After delivery, the mother tiger started to decline, though she was physically healthy and fully recovered from giving birth. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors thought that she might improve if they could find a surrogate for her lost babies.

After checking with many other zoos across the country, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother. The veterinarians decided to try something that had never been tried in a zoo environment.

Sometimes a mother of one species will take on the care of a different species. The only "orphans" that could be found quickly, were a litter of wiener pigs. The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger.

It worked.



The message?

I bet this tiger knew that these babies were different. But she didn't care. She needed babies and they needed a mom, and that's all that mattered. I wonder if the other mother tigers stopped and stared at them, or if they made catty remarks behind her back about the babies' father. Somehow, I doubt it.