Kestryl's Quiet Little Spot

Breast-fed tiger cubs die of dehydration

May 12, 2005

YANGON, Myanmar - Two Bengal tiger cubs breast fed for weeks by a Yangon housewife have died of heat and dehydration, a Myanmar newspaper reported on Thursday.

The black-striped, orange-brown cubs drew worldwide attention when Hla Htay, a mother of a baby boy, answered a plea for help from Yangon’s zoo and fed the cats three times a day after they were rejected by their tigress mother.

But the cubs -- a male and female born on March 17 -- did not take well to human milk and they grew weaker as temperatures soared in the hot season.

The male died on May 3, six days after his sister perished.

"The main causes of death were scorching weather and lack of milk from the natural mother," Dr. Khin Maung Win of the Yangon Zoological Garden told the Myanmar-language Interview Journal.

"We did all we could to save them. They were kept in an air-conditioned room, but their livers could not accept human milk," he said.

Three cubs were born at the zoo, but their mother killed one and refused to nurse the others. After bottle feeding failed, the zoo put out a call for breastfeeding mothers.

These baby tiger cubs died because they could not get the one thing they could not live without, their mother's milk. Many people went out of their way to try and find a 'substitute' for tiger's milk for the cubs, but in the end they could not find a substitute for the real thing.

We all have things we feel we cannot live without. For me it's my Internet connection and my TiVo. However, if those things were to disappear tomorrow would I really cease to exist? No. I would certainly miss those wonderful 'distractions' that I once had in my life, but I would go on living.

However, many people live their ignoring the one thing they truly cannot 'exist' without, God. Some choose to completely ignore Him, others pay lip service on Holidays or Sundays, and some even try to 'make' God into what they want Him to be... when in truth it has always been the other way around.

We all need to be thankful everyday for what God has given us. Our lives, our friends, the plants and animals around us,... even the Internett and Blogging! Without God's gift of life to all of us..... there would be nothing.

Spend some time talking to God, thanking and praising Him for all that He has given us. Spend even more time listening to God letting Him use us in the way 'He' sees fit. On a daily basis, let God be the one thing that you truly cannot live without.... let God be your "Tiger's Milk".