My Role Model’s Inner Animal Hybrid

“A mother is she who can take the place if all others but whose place no one else can take.” My mom is my role model. Her actions don’t symbolize a single animal but rather a collection of creatures. She takes after a total of three seemingly different animals; the elephant, the alligator and the cheetah. It is understood that elephants and good mothers correlate. Elephants make great mothers because they carry two hundred twenty pound baby for at least 22 months. These moms don’t just say gee thanks for the stretch marks and go their merry way but they stay with their calf nine years for males and adulthood for females. My mom was told that she wasn’t able to give birth due to a skiing accident. She had proved the doctors wrong and so she endured the pain as I was extracted from her abdomen. In the wild, elephants follow formalized family structures with older females, at the top. Daughter elephants always stick close with their mothers, forming families. I was always close with my mom. I remember my four year old self squeezing her legs as she was on a step stool, painting a room. At first glance alligators in their appearance alone don’t seem cuddly or even motherly.

They have scaly bodies which doesn’t seem comforting to a baby. The reason why they are good mothers is because they use least amount of strength they have to pick up their young; it is almost as if they kiss their young when they pick up them. To onlookers, my mom is tough as nails. Her hands suffer through all kinds of calluses, scars and blisters doing yard work and construction. The way she handled me she was very delicate, always ensuring that I never got hurt. For example, when I was seven I had two parakeets and they died within a year of adopting them. I was at the age where I knew what death meant, however I wasn’t sure on how to cope with it. Instead of buying two more parakeets, my mom set aside a memorial for the parakeets; we had a service for them. Looking back it was the best thing that she could have done for me. Cheetahs are a prime example of what a good mother does. For instance, mother cheetahs travel their brood to protect their cubs from predators. My mom and I moved away from from my father who was abusive.

She struggled through to make ends meet financially but persevered with dignity. Unlike lionesses who devour the food before feeding their cubs, cheetahs let their young eat before they do. Similarly, whenever we ran out of food and we had only a few dollars, my mom would let me order a happy meal and watched me eat. Affectionate by nature, mommy cheetahs are open to show their love; they purr and lick their cubs. Likewise, my mom shows her love by saying I love you every day and hugging me when I am in need of comforting. Case in point, my mom saw me come home crying hysterically because I fell off my bike, skinning my legs and arm. She kissed my cuts and put Pocahontas bandages on them.