Is Motherly affection specific to Humans alone ???

As construction is goin on in our house in Podanur, I was there from April 21 to 24, 2007. On Tuesday morning, I received a call that a dog(which used to be near our house. It recently gave birth to 3 beautiful puppies in black, brown and other colors) is keeping on shouting in feeble voice around the underground water tank.

Sensing something wrong, me & my brother went to the site. With the help of torch from our neighbour(who ringed me), my brother was lookin inside the tank. And, there it was... he saw a little puppie floating on the water :-( Construction workers seem to have forgot to close the man hole.

He slowly dragged on to the opening of the tank and lifted it outside. My bro even tried to save the puppy by pressing the stomach but in vain. Not sure, for many hours it was floating. Just couldn't imagine the little puppy fighting for life inside the tank.

Sadness gripped the entire atmosphere and in our minds. And, we put the dead puppy on the sand for the mother dog to feel it. We could see that the mother is licking its kid and trying to bring it back alive..

The mother had two other puppies alive... but, it was more concerned about the dead puppy. If you go to the beginning of this post, you can imagine that the mother was walking around the water tank breathing heavily and giving out sad sounds(I don't get a better word for this)

hmm... at that instant I was filled with all sorts of feelings..... Motherly affection is not for the humans alone... though I have heard others saying abt this, this is my real life experience.

And, and after some time, the mother went to the remaining two puppies, signalled them and it left our building. It seemed to me as if the mother is saying to her kids "kannungala.. vaanga ingirundha poiyidalam.. illati ungalayum ivanunga konnu poduvanunga"

aah.. slap on my face...