Today, as I do nearly every day I went hiking with my camera. I did so after wishing my own mother a happy Mother’s Day and cooking my wife breakfast. I went to one of my usual haunts not expecting to see anything extraordinary but ever hopeful. As I rolled into the area, I was chatting with a friend of mine on the phone and noticed a small hawk sitting in the remains of a downed tree on the side of the road. Concluding my phone call, I started my photography adventure early and in the middle of the road.
Once I got out of the truck and approached to take pictures, I quickly realized when the bird did not take flight that something was off. A closer look revealed this hawk-child left about fourteen feet up on a thick muscadine grape vine in freshly fallen tree debris. Very vulnerable and clearly likely a victim of the freshly fallen tree, I took a couple of pictures of the unhappen youngster and vowed to check on him on my way out. He was crying and quite pitiful.
When I returned, the poor kid was still there crying and looking pretty pathetic. About the time I was considering mounting a rescue effort myself or calling someone, his cries intensified and he seemed to look across the street. It looked as though Mom had arrived.
I backed up and as soon as I did, she came swooping in to feed junior. Clearly she was not able to carry him off to someplace safer, but she was obviously committed to caring for him despite the unfortunate circumstances. And…she seemed pretty damn capable to me.
I got back in my truck thinking how incredibly touching it was to see a wild animal mother care for her child in distress with all the tenderness of a human parent. I hope it works out for both of them. I am grateful to my mother and grateful she never had to feed me snakes. I am grateful to my wife for all she did with our children and for mothers all over the world human and otherwise. Children, thank you mothers. You may take that snake for granted, but mom had to get it somewhere, and it might not be as easy as it seems. Moreover, I’ll bet snake tastes really really good when you are alone, hungry, and scared.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there reading this. Please feel free to share this with other mothers.
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