Here’s yet another story that underlines why we must be nice to animals — because they are beings that think and have emotions:
A newborn baby abandoned in a Kenyan forest was saved by a stray dog who apparently carried her across a busy road and through a barbed wire fence to a shed where the infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies, witnesses said Monday.
The baby girl, named “Angel” by hospital workers, was clad in a tattered shirt and wrapped in a plastic bag when the dog found her Friday, according to Aggrey Mwalimu, owner of the shed where the baby was discovered in a poor neighborhood near the Ngong Forest in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
“When the dog picked up the baby in a dirty bag, it came and dropped her behind the wooden building where the dog has its puppies,” Mwalimu told The Associated Press Monday.
This is not unusual. Animals can sense that a baby is a small version of a person. We often tell the story of our cat Clawdette letting then 2 year old Kayla carry her across the room. The assertive cat had a startled look on her face but did not move a muscle. The vet later explained: “Adult female cats will sometimes let a small child get away with things they wouldn’t let an adult human get away with. They sense that they’re dealing with a child.” MORE:
The 7-pound, 4-ounce infant was taken to a hospital and “is doing well, responding to treatment. She is stable … she is on antibiotics,” said Hannah Gakuo, spokeswoman of the Kenyatta National Hospital. The baby was found after two children reported hearing an infant’s cries near their wood-and-corrugated-metal shack…
They eventually found the tan mixed-breed dog lying protectively with a puppy beside the mud-splattered baby wrapped in a torn black shirt, Adhiambo said. The short-haired dog with light brown eyes has no name, residents said.
How’s this name? Hero.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.