After reading many beautiful and heartwarming articles written by mothers and daughters about Mother's Day, I wanted to share some of the photos and stories of animals I've seen around the world taking care of their young.  Some of you know that I've been involved in animal rescue for many years and have a soft spot in my heart for all animals.  I am always amazed at how protective and caring animals are of their offspring.

  I really wanted to write a post in honor of all mothers and especially those that are often overlooked on Mother's Day each year.  If you have pets you are a mother they could not survive without you!  I wrote a similar post about animal mothers and their offspring for Mother's Day a couple of years ago.  One of my readers was very grateful that I had posted it.  Sadly not humans have a mother at all or one that they are close to. 

My husband and I have also taken in several stray pregnant cats.  We found homes for all of the babies and mothers including the seven orange ones in the second photo down.  We actually kept the mothers - Princess (the black cat) and Peaches (orange cat) for ourselves. 

The monkeys that I saw at the Monkey Forest in Ubud, Bali we're so fun to watch.  The babies were so cute and well taken care of by their mothers.   I thought this mother was showing tremendous patience with her little one.
Here is a mother monkey feeding her baby what appears to be some coconut:
I saw many elephant mothers with their babies in the Serengeti National Park while in Tanzania:

I've always said that I believe very little of what I hear and only some of what I see.  The same goes for photographs as I know now that they can be edited and manipulated in many ways.  I still often get asked by many of my friends and people why I would want to visit some of the places I do - especially Antarctica and Tanzania in Africa. 

It's great to be able to punch a few buttons on my cell phone and pull up some images from my Instagram account and show people a few pictures of these places.  I can tell by the looks on their face that they understand why I would want to travel so far away into places that many perceive to be dangerous.   At least I can show them why I wanted to see certain places in person.

You can use any of my photos in a variety of sizes for free without worrying about getting in trouble as they are free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0.  My profile on Pixabay is HERE

Above is a photo of myself in Paradise Bay and below is Paradise Bay which I thought was the most beautiful part of Antarctica which is saying a lot.

This ship seemed so small compared to the other ones I saw and compared to the glaciers surrounding it

The sun would go down around 11:00Pm and come up around 3:00 AM
The glaciers were so much bigger than I expected and it really was not as cold as I expected.  It was generally around 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

This was the closest thing I saw to a sunset and it was almost midnight

The following photos were taken on in Massai Land and on safari in Tanzania.

  These zebra kept running back and forth past these lions.  I was so scared they would get caught playing their "game".

Thank you very much for stopping by my blog.  Please feel free to leave any comments or questions.  I really enjoy hearing from my readers.  I hope you are all having a wonderful week.   

~Michelle

The Salt of the Earth chronicles Sebastião Salgado's career.  You can see his photos here.  I highly recommend taking a peek as they blow my mind!  Not only did this movie inspire me to work on my black and white photography, but it also changed my thoughts and goals regarding my future travel plans.  I watched this movie on the airplane when I returned from Italy and you can see the reviews from Rotten Tomatoes here.

Since visiting Bali 2 1/2 years ago and then Tanzania about two years ago I have become more of a tourist than s traveler.  I have only wanted to see happy pretty things over the past couple of years.  While I have greatly enjoyed myself I know there is another side of the world and part of me has always wanted to make a difference. 

Watching this movie "The Salt of the Earth" has convinced me that I would like to do something either in my own country or in another one to help the environment or people and animals in some way.  It was a very timely thing for me to see this movie a few weeks ago.  The narrator (Salgado) became disenchanted with humanity while taking photographs of war and refugee camps decided that he needed to make some changes.  He eventually goes back to where he was raised in Brazil and helps restore the land that had become barren due to deforestation.

With the Masssai:

I am writing this post in honor of all mothers and especially those that are often overlooked on Mother's Day each year.  If you have pets you are a mother they could not survive without you!  I also wanted to share the love shown by some of the animal mothers' for their babies that I've seen around the world. The top photo is of an elephant mother with her baby that I saw in Tanzania at the Serengeti National Park.

My husband and I have also taken in several stray pregnant cats.  We found homes for all of the babies and mothers including the seven orange ones in the second photo down.  We actually kept the mothers - Princess (the black cat) and Peaches (orange cat) for ourselves. 

More elephants in the Serengeti:

A pride of lions in the Serengeti:

Monkeys in Bali:

Foster cats:





Sled dog I saw in Alaska with her four day old pups:
I hope all of you have a wonderful day regardless whether you are a mother or not.  Thank you so much for stopping by.  Take care my friends!

~Michelle

Today I'm packing for my dream trip to Tahiti, Bora-Bora, and the Marquesas Islands.  I'm very excited, but having a hard time deciding what I need as I will be gone for 17 days!  Part of the trip is a cruise which will disembark in San Diego.  I will have 4 days at sea.  I know that is a long time but after having 11 days at sea when I visited Antarctica, I know that LOTS of good reading material is very, very important!  I hope it's a little different than Hawaii and New Zealand, but if it's similar that will be OK :-)

Hawaii:

New Zealand:

Thank you so much for stopping by!  I will be in touch as soon as I have a decent internet connection.  The internet on cruise ships is notoriously expensive and slow so I won't be posting until my return in mid March.  Take care my friends!

~Michelle