tooth and claw

I watched "Arctic Bears" on PBS and was laughing out loud at the weird similarities between my boys and the bear cubs. Watching them nurse and wean and bat at each other and fight over (not crackers, but) a piece of bloody seal was so familiar (root-- family) that it was uncanny. The differences, then, become that much more shocking when our mammalian similarities end. Does a pregnant Polar Bear mother REALLY lie down and allow the snow to cover her... give birth in a snowy cave, and go for nine months without a bite to eat? Allowing her cub to milk her dry? Does she really emerge from that whitish womb to the task of finding seals to replenish her and her new offspring? And does this very survival really leave another arctic mother bereft? Sigh-- nature and its claws. It all does, of course, bring up questions about how we modern-life humans know food at this point, as well. Watching this program and "Fast Food Nation" lately has made me flirt with my vegetarian past. No manifestos yet, but my sense of the dignity of other species (even while some are carnivores themselves) increases after observing one for an hour, and has at least made me far more mindful of the reality of meat.