life with an animal lover

I think I've mentioned before that my daughter loves loves LOVES Animal Planet. She especially loves watching the animal rescue shows (you know the ones, where they show the dogs or cats or horses all emmaciated and/or neglected and horribly abused). I think she has a stomach of steel, because none it phases her in the slightest. Her theory is that it's not gross, because the animals are being helped. There is a happy ending to the pain and suffering. This is how I know she will make a good Vet, if she continues on her current course of action. Me, I get queasy at the first sign of blood. In fact, she'll often warn me "Mom, you probably don't want to come in here, it's gross."

Anyway, yesterday we were watching a bit of Animal Planet, a show called Man Eaters, about big cats that well, eat people. (This was ironic as we started our Sunday with a trip to Urgent Care for a cat-bite! Yay!) So, we're watching the show and there's a story about a woman in California who was out hiking with friends when she decided to go back to the car by herself. She turned back and shortly thereafter came upon a Mtn. Lion standing on the trail. A split second later he jumped on her, latched onto her face (!) and brought her to the ground. The re-enactment shows how her friends heard her screams and came running to her aid. The 3 men tried everything to get the cat off her: screaming, kicking it, throwing rocks at it...until finally one of them remembered that he had a fishing knife. This was the only thing that got the cat to release its grip. As they are telling this story, they are showing photos from the hospital; this woman was horribly mauled and lost one of her eyes. The photos were gruesome. There was also a brief flash of the Mtn. Lion which had stumbled off and died from the knife wounds. Back to the scenes of the woman recovering in the hospital, bandaged up but crying from the traumatic memory of the brutal attack. Anna began crying and I thought "Oh my god, I probably shouldn't let her watch this." So I said "Oh honey, look! She survived! Her friends saved her and now she's fine! She's so lucky!"

And she said "That's not why I'm crying!! WHY DID THEY KILL THAT MOUNTAIN LION??!!!"

Sigh. And this is how I know she'll be a VET and not a doctor. I should have known; this was a kid who insisted on being a Mountain Lion for Halloween when she was 5.