God Smiles

One Face From Hell

Have you ever spent hours watching animals and comparing the genre with their human counterparts or with people you know? It’s fun sometimes. It can also be a real eye-opener. God does some remarkable messaging if we only paid attention when we need to and not when it is too late.

Canadian geese mate for life. If they have been together for awhile, when one mate dies the remaining mate will sacrifice their own life and remain beside the fallen mate’s side. Til death they do part. They are devoted and very protective parents, fierce as needed. On a zoo trip with my son decades ago, I witnessed a truly God messaging incident. There was a small group of young people, college age, three boys strutting their stuff for three young ladies under-dressed.

Mad Dad!

Surrounding the zoo lake was a flock of Canadian geese who nested here yearly. The eggs were hatching. All do not hatch at the same time. Nature’s way of providing one on one care for each gosling for a few days before a sibling arrives. One young man in the throes of total peacock ignorance decided to play king of the hill with a gander already peeved at the number of kids annoying his family. Mr. Watch Me I’m Hot decided to chase this dad.

Starlings and grackles are garbage birds. Scavengers. Lazy and vicious. They devote their lives to laying eggs they don’t want to raise. Shortly before laying time, they seek out the nests of the most beautiful birds around: robins, blue jays, cardinals, mockingbirds. Some are dumb enough to mess with hawks and owls but that usually only happens once.

They then kill all but one egg in the nest they were too lazy to build, lay their eggs, and take off knowing that most of the hens will raise or at least hatch the alien egg. These alien chicks eat more, grow faster than the native chick, and will kill it off when it hatches. Some times the “foster parent” will, at this point, toss the alien chick out of the nest, abandon the nest, and fly off in grief to start over again. Enough times, though, they will rear the alien chick to adulthood.

American Avocet. Nested pair.

These chicks are as lazy as their birth parents. They will hound other feeding birds with truly spine-grating shrieks until another bird feeds their sorry selves. They will search for food if they have to but devote more time to looking for a patch of birds to pester than they ever look for their own survival. They devote more time and effort to seeking something to kill than any other bird on the planet, outside of the predator species. Starlings and grackles thrive around homeless shelters, garbage dumps and dumpsters, and highway billboards.

Manatees were born with no fear factor. They are as trusting of humans as are dolphins. They will sacrifice themselves to protect the offspring in their herds. Earlier this year, over 100 manatees perished in Florida during a vicious cold wave that attacked the entire nation.

This particular herd of manatees had congregated, as they always did every winter, at the outlet to the ocean from one of Florida’s water department conduits. Sea World has, on more than one occasion, gone out in even hurricane weather to rescue a whale they then trained for one of their shows. Sea World couldn’t be bothered with saving this herd of manatees that had frequented this area for over a decade. You can’t train manatees. They don’t jump on command. They don’t balance balls on their nose to entertain the masses. They aren’t the most lovely creature on earth but they are certainly the most trusting – – –  –

Crystal River Manatees

as trusting as children arrive on the planet

Manatees are also not the ugliest creature God ever created. Nor is a moose 

Man is

 

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