Happy Mother’s Day!
I thought it might be fun to have a look at some wild moms (and dads) this week to celebrate the roller-coaster ride that is parenthood.
It’s easy to love the eggs. They don’t talk, don’t need to be fed or chased down. You can abandon them for short periods of time without other moms judging. Once those things hatch though, the story changes.
Wild babies are cute there is no doubt about it but the amount of work and patience it takes to raise offspring is a lot whether you’re human or not. There are the moments early on when it’s great just to hang out with your kids and play, smell the roses, or eat some grass. But once they start growing they don’t stop.
To keep them growing of course you need to feed them on a regular basis. That might seem easy when you only have a litter of one but try feeding 4 or 5 or 9! One dead raven isn’t going to satisfy everyone…
But parents have a sense of humour, it’s a necessity if you’re going to survive. Sometimes they’ll try to make you eat things you don’t like or give you portions half the size of your body just to see if you can swallow that thing whole. (holy crap you did it.) Early on though they do the killing and dismembering for you, ’til you can get the hang of it.
At some point though kids will test the boundaries and try to stay up past their bedtime or stray beyond your sight and then you just have to grab them by the scruff of the neck and drag them home no matter who’s watching (or taking photos) and no matter how embarrassing it might be in front of your friends.
Eventually, they hit that awkward and angry stage called youth. They look angry, they don’t want to be seen with you, and they keep asking for the keys to the car.
Finally, that day comes when you can chase your children away to start living their own lives, seeking their own mates and creating their own offspring at which point you have the short-lived pleasure of grandparents revenge watching the reality of raising a litter of their own.
So here’s to all the mothers taking on the wild experience of raising kids. Happy Mother’s Day!