Emperor Penguins - 019

Parenting lessons from the animal kingdom.

Photo by Casey Allen on Unsplash

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it!” Leo shouts as he repeatedly tugs on his left shoe.

“You can do it, Leo. I know you can. You did it yesterday.” I reply.

Leo struggles to get his foot past the heel tab. “No! No, it’s hard!”

“Leo, come on, we don’t have a lot of time. We’re already running late.”

Leo rips off the shoe on his right foot and proceeds to shout and scream. I close my eyes, try to find my happy place and wonder what I ever did to deserve this. Maybe in a previous life I was a shitty shoe cobbler who fucked up people’s feet with my terrible cobbling or something.

Yeah, that has to be it. Shoe karma.

Parenting is hard. There’s no bones about that. How do I explain it… It’s different from having a dog or going to work and dealing with shitty employees and toxic managers.

With a child you have this person whom you have to interact with around the clock. No options here and there’s no vacation time. Some moments you’re the boss, in other moments the kiddo is the boss. And, boy, is the boss temperamental. I’ve had ketchup and hotdogs tossed on me on more than one occasion for no apparent reason.

I mean I’ve literally had a manager scream at her team because her “manager survey” results were so piss poor that I assume someone actually took the time to talk to her about her “conduct.” She liked to throw things on occasion as well, the occasional notepad or marker but never ketchup and hotdogs. I mean, that’s just inhumane.

You know I read somewhere that orangutang parents have it tough. Some of their babies need to be carried for up to five freaking years. Clutching at mom or dad’s orange chest hair with those long orangutang arms, never leaving their side for one goddamn second…

Strawberry poison dart frogs carry their tadpoles, one by one, up a tree to these small pools formed within leaves. Each tadpole gets its own pond and good ‘ol mom tends to each individual kid for up to eight weeks. Reason being? Tadpoles display cannibalistic behavior.

Male Emperor Penguins stand motionless for up to 64 days in order to incubate and hatch their eggs. I’m not sure how cold it gets in Antarctica in the middle of winter but let’s just say cold enough to where nothing should be just standing around motionless. Oh, and those poor dad penguins lose 44 pounds in the process. Because you know, they can’t move to get food.

Newborn dolphins have so much zest for their new lives that they don’t sleep for a full month. That’s right, 30 straight days. Imagine if you had a newborn that stayed awake that long… Actually, that’s a solid premise for a Stephen King novel. And mama dolphin? Yep, she stays awake for a full month.

Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? I guess I’ll shut up now and just be glad that I wasn’t born an Emperor Penguin. Fuck that sounds rough. Fucking father of the animal kingdom material those penguins.