is the source of this picture, and consequently, a sentence I believe in.
When I saw this picture my eyes and my heart just welled.
When I was six and my family lived in Zambia, my father brought home a baby like this one evening. The baby bambi was maybe just a few days old. His mother had been killed and the baby was about to become someone’s supper as well. My dad saw what was going on, paid for the baby that was still alive – his twin brother had also been killed – and brought him home to me.
I named him Timba. He was so terrified of everything, every smallest sound made him cry like a baby child and his heart raced like crazy in my arms. I fed him from a bottle and just held him. That calmed him a little but still he was so afraid of this alien environment where he didn’t belong – this concrete building, amongst strange loud big people. I’ll never forget how he cried at night.
No matter how much I loved him I couldn’t save him.
Maybe I’ll tell you Timba’s story, later, now must rush to fetch my babies from school.
Ain’t it funny how it goes, this thing called life.
How it breaks your heart sometimes.
Post scriptum: My Bambi
It seems like there are many of you sweet people out there who care about the fate of my baby bambi Timba.
So. Timba let me bottle feed him so he grew up a little… But he truly suffered no matter how gently we tried to care of him. Alien human sounds, dogs barking, the clapping of feet on the floor, shouting from outside. Anyone doing anything made him weep and shake uncontrollably. His little heart pounded as if it was trying to escape his chest.
My father concluded that us, as a family, couldn’t offer this wild creature a life worthy of a living feeling being.
There were two zoos in the country and as the phones – or nothing else for that matter – worked, he visited them (inspected them in fact – my dad was one of the real men, kind to animals). And it turned out that in the other zoo a mother bambi had just lost a baby at birth. We hoped against hope that the mother would accept Timba as her own.
My dad took Timba to the zoo. He wouldn’t allow me to come along and see how my little one managed. But I do know that my dad went to visit Timba several times – absolutely refusing to take me with him – and came back with no real news. Other than all seemed ok.
Without looking me in the eyes.
He knew my soft spot for animals all too well.
And I could read him all too well ♥.
~*♥*~
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