For Real Toads: my inner animal

Today a feisty lady known as Fireblossom has challenged everyone in, or near, or  even curious about the writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads to write about our own animal within.

She mentioned some words which are magic to me. One is "sloth"! I connected with my inner sloth long ago, and have blogged about it twice, once in 2009:

http://unfittie.blogspot.com/2009/12/here-it-is-chapter-3-youve-read-about.html

and once in 2010, with photos:

http://unfittie.blogspot.com/2010/10/camera-critters-i-relate-to-sloths.html

My inner sloth pretty much controls my life, and it interfered with a lot of things before it began interfering with blogging. My inner sloth doesn't hang from trees and feed on leaves. It lives inside me and feeds on physical pain.

However, meek, mild-mannered Auntie Kay has a dark side, too, and it erupts when a threat to a weaker being is perceived.

Fireblossom mentioned "mama grizzly" and my mind flashed immediately to that well of adrenalin I call my "mother bear instinct"! It is sometimes hard to imagine a weaker being than I, but whenever I realized a child, a small animal or, more recently, my frail and elderly parents or the other patients in the care facility, needed me to help, I'd be there with no thought to spare for the pain in my feet, my back, or my internal organs.

Wikipedia photo of
reconstructed Giant Ground Sloth

I become that extinct animal, that cross between a Canadian grizzly and a Costa Rican sloth, the Giant Ground Sloth, but I don't confine my rescue missions to the ground. I've been known to climb ladders (which I can't usually do) and swim (which I do badly) if I hear a scream, a squeak or even a whimper from a source I identify as needing me.

*

under my unprepossessing exterior

hides an animal greatly superior

who isn't so mild

whenever a child

needs someone to be big and scarier

*

Not much of a poem, but a poem was required for the prompt, and I never seem to get adrenalin rushing to the aid of my muse.