Bringing a giraffe into the world is a tall order. A baby giraffe falls 10 feet from its mother’s womb and usually lands on its back. Within seconds it rolls over and tucks its legs under its body. From this position it considers the world for the first time and shakes off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from its eyes and ears. Then the mother giraffe rudely introduces its offspring to the reality of life.
In his book, “A View from the Zoo”, Gary Richmond describes how a newborn giraffe learns its first lesson.
Get Up.(Internet)
Get Up.(Internet)
The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.
When it doesn’t get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts. Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs.
Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they’d get it too, if the mother didn’t teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.
The late Irving Stone understood this. He spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing novelized biographies of such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.
Stone was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of all these exceptional people. He said, “I write about people who sometime in their life have a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished and they go to work.
“They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified, and for years they get nowhere. But every time they’re knocked down they stand up. You cannot destroy these people. And at the end of their lives they’ve accomplished some modest part of what they set out to do.”
(Source: Craig B. Larson, Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching from Leadership Journal)
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, October 7, 2014
at Tuesday, October 07, 2014
and is filed under
Animal-stories,
Inspirational-stories-about-life
. You can follow any responses to this entry through the
.
0 Review
Popular Stories
-
Once upon a time lived on a cloud that was grown up over a very beautiful country. One day, she saw another much bigger cloud and she fel... -
A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, 'Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.' The... -
At least once a day our old black cat comes to one of us in a way that we've all come to see as a special request. It does not mean he ... -
Within walking distance of my Manhattan apartment, but also light- years away, there is a part of New York called Spanish Harlem. In many ... -
There was a villager. He was illiterate. He did not know how to read and write. He often saw people wearing spectacles for reading books ... -
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure. - Joseph Campbell No one epitomizes the fa... -
A voyaging ship was wrecked during a storm at sea and only two of the men on it were able to swim to a small, desert like island. The t... -
My father had given me so much, in so many ways, and at this moment I also wanted to give something that I had to him. How about the 100-me... -
The greatest saleswoman in the world today doesn't mind if you call her a girl. That's because Markka Andrews has generated more th...