We're Sick And Tired Of Raising Your Young
by Bruce HeardWe're Sick And Tired Of Raising Your Young
By Grey Claw Wolf
Listen, humans, I am really starting to get tired of this heap of dung. Get your act together and learn to keep better track of your young, because we wolves are seriously sick of raising them.
I was roaming the forest the other day, just marking my territory, when what do I come across? That's right, a human infant. Boy, was I [bleep]ed. I'm sure the poor little waif was orphaned in a plane crash or something, and, of course, I was supposed to take it into my pack and raise it like one of our own. Well, [bleep] that: We've got enough humans to raise already.
We wolves have our own offspring to rear, you know. It's not like we're just sitting around all day, waiting for another one of your little twerps to fall off a skyship. Do you think that after a hard day of hunting, I want to come back to the cave and look after some hairless, wormy thing that isn't even going to pass on my genetic information? Do I look like a bloody nanny?
If it were just a flying carpet crash survivor every now and again, I could deal with it. But when you figure in the white-water-rafting disasters, the mountain-climbing accidents, and the attacking bears that kill the parents but spare the children, those orphaned infants really start to add up. I'm working my paws to the bone as it is.
And it wouldn't be nearly so bad if your babies weren't so helpless. Our pups are weaned and out of the den within nine weeks. A human child can't even walk until it reaches 15 months. Fifteen months! Talk about pathetic: By that age, our young are having kids of their own.
I'm sorry if I sound bitter, but I have to speak up, or the situation will only get worse. I'm the alpha female of a pretty good-sized pack, and it's hard enough finding, eating and regurgitating food for my own pups, much less a bunch of human children. I do my best to make ends meet, but your young are so picky it's next to impossible. They'll eat the partially digested berries I bring them, but they refuse to swallow the chipmunk meat I vomit into their mouths. If I injure a squirrel and put it in front of one of your young, the baby just lies there and wails at the top of its lungs for hours!
Then there's the problem of basic hygiene. Haven't you ever heard of licking yourself clean after you defecate? How revolting. Our offspring instinctively know to wash themselves from the moment they're born. Then again, there are a lot of things our offspring instinctively know.
I know what you're thinking--we shouldn't drag your infants back to the den in the first place, if all we're going to do is [bleep]ch about it, right? After all, we could just send them out to start their own pack when winter approaches. To tell you the truth, we have driven a few of the more annoying ones out, but we always feel so guilty when we find their half-eaten carcasses a few days later. After the fifth or sixth time, it's hard to act like you didn't know it would happen.
Worst of all, in that rare instance when you do come to retrieve your missing kid, we don't get so much as a thank you. No, you just grab him and race back to "civilisation" as fast as possible, so he can unlearn everything we taught him about marking his territory and stalking prey. No wonder wolves have been known occasionally to attack humans--you're a bunch of ungrateful [blankety-blank].
So the next time you lose one of your darn kids in the woods, you can forget about us raising it, because it ain't happening. Let the bloody elk do it!