The 7 pound 4 ounce baby girl had been placed in a plastic bag
and dropped in the woods without nourishment or water. There
she lay for perhaps two days, starving, her umbilical cord infected.
She must have cried out, but along the busy road that bordered
the forest, no one was listening, nobody heard.
Well, almost no one.
"I had just reached the Lenana forest," local Stephan Thoya told
a Kenya daily paper, "When I heard the sound of a baby crying.
I looked closely and I saw a dog carrying a baby wrapped in a black
dirty cloth as it crossed the road."
The dog— mixed breed, no name, probably a stray— was likely out
foraging for a meal. She'd just given birth to a litter of puppies
and they were hungry.
Now, this story could have taken an unfortunate and grisly turn
but, remember, we're talking about a dog. These are creatures who
have shared our lives for at least 12,000 years. There is a bond.
Was the canine mother moved by the plight of this human infant?
Was it just blind instinct? Whatever the case, she carried the
little girl back to her own litter, caring for her as best she
could. That's where the child was ultimately found: nestled amongst
a pile of puppies under the watchful eye of the mother dog. She was
taken to a local hospital and is now doing fine.
And the dog? Well, dozens of Kenyans are visiting her home,
bringing food and medication. One person has even offered to feed
the dog until the day she dies.
However skeptical you may be about the intelligence of non-human
animals, it would be hard to argue that, in this case, a dog— and
a hungry stray at that— didn't act more responsibly than at least one human.
Going to the dogs? Well, maybe... if you're lucky.
Ron Reagan for MSNBC
