Short animal stories
Some animal stories have been memorable for me, and I've appreciated these for years.
The Discovery channel had a neat bit about a prospector at work with his donkey when they were surrounded by wild dogs circling to attack them. He undid the bridle on the donkey so at least it could run away and probably learn to survive in the wild like the dogs did. He thought he might be able to get to something like a club or at least kick and go down fighting.
The donkey took off after the dogs, and they ran for it. The owner followed but it took a couple of hours before the donkey had chased them as far as it wanted to and the owner caught up. Big hugs I expect, and maybe even oatmeal for the donkey's breakfast the next morning.
I often had coffee with a beautiful, very old French couple. They chipped in this story about an event on a farm.
A very small child of theirs leaned over the side of a water trough they had for their cows, and fell in. They saw it happen but were a long ways away. A cow near the trough put its nose under the child and held it up until they got there.
Besides being grateful, they were impressed. They said a couple of times, "You might expect something like that from a dog, but not from a cow."
An Arctic researcher was carrying a shotgun loaded with slugs while he was walking. Police departments also tend to have one in the car for stopping power, just because of the big wad of lead they fire. After I became aware of that while working in the equipment room of a police station, I saw 3 Discovery channel shows where they mentioned that in the north they are carried for protection against polar bears. The issue isn't long range accuracy. The issue is just that heavy wad of lead.
He saw a large polar bear who was interested in him (the wrong way) and started running at him. It was a beautiful bear and he really didn't want to kill it, so he fired a shot over its head. That one had absolutely no effect. The bear didn't stop to think about it or even slow down.
He fired another shot right in front of it that blew ice into the bears face. The bear got the idea. It still didn't slow down, but it angled away from him so that it ran by him instead of at him. With accurate communication being one of the more difficult things I've ever had to do, it was really nice that it worked here and at least saved the bears life. Or maybe even the guy's life. You never know when one thing that isn't supposed to go wrong will, at just the wrong time.
A woman was awake in bed when their dog came up the stairs and straight over to her. It put its nose against her face. Then it ran around to the other side of the bed and did the same with her husband, who was asleep. Then it went into the children's room.
Nothing like this had ever happened before and she was wondering what was going on. She couldn't sleep anyway so she got up and went downstairs to get something done. She noticed the dog was now on its pad sleeping, but she went to check and it was dead. It had been just saying good bye.
That story fits in with a human one. I don't mean any disrespect to us, but here it is.
A woman I know was riding in the back seat of a car on a highway, late at night in the winter. A 6 year old girl was with her. The girl's mother was in the front seat with the driver. The girl sat up and started waving good bye to her mother. Nancy didn't have much time to wonder what that was about because the car hit some black ice and started sliding.
She said the sliding seemed to last a long time with the car going sideways and backwards, before going off an embankment. It turned over a few times before she lost consciousness and finally woke up in a hospital. There she learned that the little girl hadn't survived the crash.
Chills and wonder. A power so beautiful that it held her hand through the event? So powerful and pleasant that there was a trust and an acceptance?
