5 minute freewrite 2893 prompt moving quickly
This is my post for #freewriters 2893 prompt moving quickly hosted by @mariannewest
A few days ago my husband and daughter were near his shed and heard a low pitched animal noise that neither of them recognized. Yesterday, my husband came into the house and told my daughter that he now knows what the noise they had heard was coming from.
Next to his shed is a pine tree that was struck by lightning, it has a crack down the middle. He was sitting at the table next to the tree and heard the same noise they had heard a few days before. Then he heard a squirrel chattering and looked up the tree to see a mama squirrel raising cane. Realizing what the noise was, a baby squirrel fell out of the nest, he started moving quickly for the house. I said, "you did not look for the baby" and he said, "no, I wanted the mother to find it, so I left so she could."
I am like so many humans, I would have tried to "save" the baby squirrel when in reality, doing that would have done the baby harm. My husband knew that with his leaving the area, the mother would do what mothers do, she would pick the baby up and put it back in the nest.
I told my husband I wonder if that was the same baby squirrel you heard the other day, and it keeps falling from the nest, you know, in every litter there is that rambunctious one, no matter if it's cats, dogs, or squirrels.
My sister has two cats that recently gave birth. One had six babies, and the other had one, a little bobtail, so cute. She did not like how one of the six kept being pushed away by the others when trying to feed, it was the runt. She took it to the mama cat with the one baby, and she accepted it. Now she has given her another kitten, and the mother of the six seems more content to have four babies, and no one is being pushed out. The other cat has no problem with adding kittens to her litter of one.
Sometimes when we interfere with a pet, it is for the animal's good. And sometimes when we interfere in a wild animal, it is for their good, as I did with Rudy, but in a case like the squirrel, I think my husband did the right thing.
Wow, I never knew you could take an offspring from a particular mother and hand it to another and she’ll accept it as her own. Indeed we learn everyday.
You have to be sure both mothers agree. If the mother cat had been agitated when her kitten was taken, or if the other mother cat would not let it feed, you can not do it. The mother cats gave birth a week apart, so the kittens were about the same age. I do not know if that was a factor in why it worked.
Update: @myjob, I paid out 0.049 HIVE and 0.006 HBD to reward 1 comments in this discussion thread.