snottlebocket

today, sad animal stories i read in the paper.

there's a lioness in africa that got seperated from her pride, some how her maternal instinct kicked in and she adopted a baby impala.
the lioness is taking care of the impala baby, licking it clean and keeping it save from predators and the impala is staying close to the lion.
as cute as that sounds the story has a sad ending, both of them are dying.
the lioness obviously can't give milk to the impala so the little one is starving to death and the lioness herself is starving to since she can't hunt properly without other lions.
i hope the lioness never realises the irony of starving to death while licking a baby impala clean.


closer to home a different tragedy ocurred, some of you might remember my post about the Veen outside town and the nice pictures i took there.
part of the veen is a ground covering plant called "heide", grass won't grow in the veen so most of the dry ground is covered by that instead, it's a small shrub that blooms with really nice scenting small blue flowers in spring and summer.
anyway this plant can cover ground really fast so wild sheep are used to graze it and keep it in check like that.

it works great up untill last week when some jackass thought it would be a nice idea to take a walk with his dog in the nature reserve without even bothering to leash it.
the dog scared the sheep to death, drove 4 of them into the marsh area where they drowned, mauled one sheep to death and mutilated another so badly it had to be put down and that stupid dog probably had a great time doing it.
the other sheep are understandably very traumatized and the dogowner and his dog legged it without taking responsibility.

i am really not a dogperson and things like this defenitly don't help.
what kind of asshole brings a dog to a nature reserve anyway.