A Mother Remembers

A Mother Remembers

By,Nita Kapadia
April 16,2012


It was a fine day for my foal to be out. I took her out in the grasslands. She loved the feel of the grass on her small body, the grass barely reached her shoulders now. One day she will be the tallest animal in the world!

Then suddenly, it was all over. My baby was still. She had stopped breathing.

Too late, that I learned that it was a siege by a pack called The Mountain Pride. Co-ordination gave them an edge that I couldn’t overcome, but then, sharing is a lion thing. No other cats hunt or strategize like the lion pack.

My baby was entangled in the grass. The grass that barely reached my ankles! That’s how small she was. I fell back, when suddenly two lionesses appeared in front of me. My furious, sledgehammer kicks were enough to make them turn tail. I was wrong. It was part of their strategy to distract me while two others made their kill. The kill that was my defenseless baby. They had succeeded.