Superbowl

I feel we just get "surprised" when we get a real glance at what life is like for wild animals. Many of us have pets, but it's not quite the same. People with livestock have a better idea when they see things like pigs to chickens do brutal things when most of us would still consider them as pretty tame. But those guys are still domesticated, so wild animals are really going to surprise a lot of people.

The people at the clinic have been talking about herons lately. I think of them as big, beautiful, graceful birds that like fish. Now I hear the stories about how they are really dangerous to the rescuers and will go straight for their eyes to defend themselves, and I'm seeing them come up on my wildlife photographer feeds where they are killing and eating squirrels and other mammals. So many things happen in the blink of an eye and with such violence that we don't expect from the modern and removed from nature lives most of us have.

Whenever I see animals come up against each other, I just remind myself that this is a natural situation and sometimes one side will win, and others the other one will, and it's how the world keeps its equilibrium. I do want them all succeed, though there is some bias in this particular scenario, but they're all great animals with strong survival instincts. I appreciate both the fact that I don't have to be in that situation myself as an animal, and just how much fortitude and perseverance all these underestimated animals possess.