The Manda Considers the Food Chain at a Baby Shower

While I am happy for my friends and colleagues who are successfully managing to procreate, I find the process of purchasing gifts for these blessed events stressful. I haven't got the first clue, really, what people who are having babies need or want. I'm pretty sure a box of condoms would be met with disdain.

I kid! I kid!

The thing I don't fully appreciate about gifts for infants in the preponderance of apex predators as a design staple in this genre. There seem to be a lot of lions, tigers, and bears presenting themselves as cuddly, friendly images for baby's first viewing experiences.

I've never met a lion, tiger, or bear, and my viewing experiences with Animal Planet make me pretty certain that if I ever do encounter one of these creatures, I want it to be from the relative safety of a moving vehicle. I'm pretty happy with having all my limbs firmly attached to my torso as nature intended.

In toddler wear you also see the occasional friendly shark. In my limited experience with children, I've gleaned that it's not healthy to make them afraid of everything, but Mr. Shark is not smiling, kids. He will take a chunk out of you before he realizes that you're too bony to be a satisfying meal. Or, if you're small enough, he'll just swallow you whole. It's important to exercise caution.

It just makes me wonder if things might have gone differently for Timothy Treadwell, for example, if he'd never had a teddy bear as a child.

Monkeys seem to be a popular choice as well, and with good reason. Monkeys are funny. The monkey in a fez is a gold standard by which all other forms of humor may be accurately measured. But monkeys also have a dark side. A wallet-stealing, feces-throwing, playing-with-themselves-in-public dark side. That kind of example can only lead a kid to a career in politics.