For Chuck on his 70thth Birthday
I learned from Amy Leach’s wonderful book, The Salt of the Universe, that a baby marmot is called “Chuckling.”
This is much sweeter than the curse words I used to utter when the horde of gigglers devoured my yard like fluffy lawnmowers.
There are coyote pups, wolf pups, otter pups and probably a lot of otters – I mean, other, Examples: There are plenty of species with calves and young. An armadillo is about as different from a bat as an animal can be, and yet both babies are called juveniles. The same goes for sharks and walruses. Juveniles everywhere!
But a platypus begets a puggle – really, everything about a platypus is unique. From beak to tail, pouch to puggle – such a special creature.
You probably knew that a piglet is a piglet, but did you know that a hedgehog is a baby hedgehog? Technically, piglets can also be called piglets. A sheep-goat hybrid is also called a piglet or a billy goat. I’m not kidding – at least not about goats.
An ephyra is a jellyfish larva named after the water nymph daughters of the Greek Titans, Oceanus and Tethys, who were also brother and sister. Some jellyfish are hermaphrodites, but others have a sexual stage and are known as medusae. Jellyfish seem to be reminiscent of Greek mythology in terms of classification and naming. Fascinating stuff.
Baby llamas and alpacas are both called crias, which means “baby animal” in Spanish. That is very nice! And speaking of cute, a baby porcupine is called a “porcupette,” the diminutive form of the word for the adult animal, which reminds me of garden-eating baby marmots.
My father-in-law is called Chuck, so I now call his five grandchildren “Chucklings,” and three of them are currently eating their mother and me out of our house and home. Once a giggle, always a giggle.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Little Big Moments, a collection of mini-essays about raising children, and Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems. Both titles are available almost everywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill, where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally encounters miracles while searching for his next cup of coffee.
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