Life lessons taught through nature. Day 5 of 5
photo by me
Hello!
I'm back for my final obligated 500 words a day. As I said before, I will continue to do them afterwards, but on a less frequent basis. With that being said, let's do this.
The photo is one I took of a Hercules beetle I saw while walking the other day. I've always thought these guys were cool little bugs. In hindsight, I wish I would have kept it for my kids to have as a pet for a short while. I used to keep pets from time to time as a kid, and I think you can learn a lot from animals. And it isn't limited to just how that species lives either.
Growing up, I have owned both captive bred animals and things that my brother and I caught in the wild. One thing that always struck me was how much better the wild animals did in captivity. They always ate better, moved more and were all around better pets. Well, maybe "better" is the best word. They were certainly more interesting though. You could tell that they had an incredible drive to live.
We didn't really feed them so much as we provided them prey. Once, we had a captive bred lizard die on us shortly after we brought it home. The next day, we went and caught 7 wild lizards and put them in the aquarium. We put live crickets in the aquarium with them, and they all hunted them. It was so cool to watch. They eventually even mated and laid eggs, but they never hatched. Still, it was very cool to see their lives as kids.
Sometimes we fed them by accident. We once had some wild turtles in an aquarium which we fashioned into half water and half land. Later, we thought it would be a good idea to add some wild goldfish to the tank. Well, I don't think we realized how much turtles liked fish. One of them swam to the bottom and when the fish was close enough, it shot its head out of its shell took out the goldfish's belly in an instant. It was scary but at the same time very cool.
Reflecting on those observations now, I can't help but to think of how the wild things' tenacity for life related to their experience of freedom. I mean, they obviously didn't reason about it in those terms, but something in them made them want to live more. Something made them hunt, made them mate and made them survive. I mean, in terms of basic necessities, both wild and captive bred animals had all they needed to stay alive, but sometimes all you need isn't all you need. Sometimes, all you need has to be attained, at least in part, by your own means and through your own actions. I think that adversity in some ways is necessary. We need to feel pain. We need to hunger. We need to thirst. We need to struggle, and most of all, we need to overcome. In doing so, we gift our future selves with the knowledge that the struggle is short lived and that life is worth living.
Well, that's it for today. I'll talk to you guys later.
