Few days ago in our local paper I read the short article about the world's oldest known wild bird.....a 62 year old albatross on Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.... is now a new mother again.
The bird, a Laysan albatross whom biologists have named Wisdom...... received her first ID band during the Eisenhower administration in 1956 and since then has worn out five ID bands.....always returning annually to Midway and raising her chick. Pretty darn amazing.
This little story begs the question: could a 62 year old woman birth a baby? Which, Tika was teaching me, is why we must scrutinize those dates on our family charts because it's more than rare for a 62 year old mother to be correct on those charts. And we know that sometimes those kind of date scrambles can show up!
Another baby-mom bit that I recently came up was printed in The History of Barnstable County (MA): Town of Brewster. On page 897-8 it speaks of one Thomas Crosby who came from Eastham in 1700 to become one of the first settlers of Barnstable. With his wife, Sarah, he had twelve children..... including a set of triplets, Mercy, Ann and Increase. While the blurb does not say if all twelve children lived to adulthood, the fact that the triplets were named suggests that they did. And how unusual is it for a set of triplets, born in the 17th century, to live to adulthood????
Tika continued her teachings to me: A mini-dachshund litter litter of puppies is typically never more than four, "and that's plenty!" Tika said.
That albatross is amazing!
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