Which, surprisingly enough, did not make me baby hungry

One of the coolest things we saw on our honeymoon was at the San Diego Zoo. There was a huge crowd gathered by the giraffe exhibit and wandered over to see what the deal was. Turns out that one of the giraffes had just delivered a calf a few minutes ago, in plain view of the public.

So we all stood there and cooed/gasped/awwwed in unison while the little guy struggled to stand up.

GH: Seriously, though, that thing is HUGE. How did that ever get out of her?

Me: And how did it not split its head open during the drop to the ground?

Eventually he did make his wobbly way up and stood there, swaying and tottering and looking about eight kinds of precious. And I started thinking about how animals like these are born and within an hour they're running around behind Mom. Whereas human babies just lay there like lumps for pretty much YEARS and have to have everything done for them. What is it that giraffe mommies have figured out?

I'm betting giraffe babies used to pull the "oh, I'm helpless, build me a bassinet" routine back in the day.

Mom Giraffe: "Fine. I'm sure the lions will consider the bassinet a tasty bonus when they get here in about 20 minutes."

Baby Giraffe: "Aaaaand I'm up."

This just goes to show what a big motivator lions can be, I suppose. I'll bet if we knew things were out there waiting to pick us off, we'd get twitching.

You can read more about the His Preciousness the Giraffe (and see a pic) here.

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