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New Life

That time of year had swung around again. His brother and mother were not around to tend to this years batch of newborns as they had been called away for two separate beast healing emergencies. For the most part things in their absence had gone rather smoothly all things considered but there was always an exception to the rule and this year it happened to be a female called Morrigan. She was a star hitter in their breeding program, consistantly producing very fine offspring from stellar breeding male studs. This year however something seemed to have gone wrong internally. The ranch had been monitoring her progress avidly when she went in to labour. It was one of the most exciting parts of being on a breeding ranch. The eggs promised new little lives. The female had been pacing which was normal and straining through contractions which was normal, what was not normal however was that after two hours nothing had been laid. Thal was alerted to the absence of eggs by a trusted stable hand that had been with the ranch for years.

He immediately dropped what it was he was doing before and scurried over to the big barn that at this time of year was used for this exact purpose to house new mothers and keep them close to the main house for observation and keep them safe from escapees, visitors and other predators.

He inspected her and got some special herbs from the garden he made a warm mash of them and fed it to her by hand to help sooth inflamation and pain and help to keep her calm. Janarim that were stressed often had a harder time passing eggs and he suspected that the problem was a small birth canal and a rather large egg.

Then he draped warm cloth around her body and her hiney the heat would sooth and that would help pass the egg. Now all he could do was wait and stroke her armored forhead.

In about half an hour the largest egg he had seen yet passed. That was most abnormal but it seemed viable so far as he could tell, after that the rest of the birth went very smoothy. The mother was in recovery and it was around two in the morning before he was able to crawl into his own bed.

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Bird Watching

At some point in the year he became quite meditative. Deciding to dissociate somewhat from the hustle and bustle. Partly it was all the drama that had happened earlier and partly he supposed that it was that he was becoming older and a tad slower. Which made him fret somewhat about the age of his parents especially his Dad. He was spending more time with his Dad who was less able to ride the wild ones but still made a point of coming out of the big office once in a while to see how the critters and his massive family were doing and something he found they both enjoyed greatly was watching the wild bird life of Matori.

Thal found himself bird watching especially in the morning outside the house he shared with Terr and the triplet boys when they were still around. Thal knew that they would always return to this place. It was a point in their lives, an anchor. Just like the nests of the birds he watched. Each of them had grown up in a nest and in the case of the fish eagles they often reused the same huge six foot or more nests that they made on the coast to raise their children.

Today had been a particularly fruitful day as he had seen a bird that he had not seen before, likely a migrant from one of the other areas in tendaji. Sometimes rather large storms blew birds quite far off their migratory route resulting in a kerfullfle of bird watchers all trying to see it for themselves. He was very blessed today. It was a bit of a strange duck but so was he so he did not hold it against it. The thought amused him and brought some joy and excitement back in his life for which he was most grateful.

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