Life Is Amazing!

I watched a special on PBS' Nature the other day. It was the first of a three-part series about animal homes. This first episode was about bird nests. 

As you know, I love birds, but I hadn't given it much thought as to how many different kinds of nests there are. It's kind of amazing. As the episode showed about 6 or so different birds building their homes, they were all so unique. The little hummingbird makes his nest from plant fibers and spider silk; the osprey carries hundreds of pounds of sticks and builds up a colossal mess of a nest; the brush turkey in Australia just kicked back a giant pile of leaves, left the eggs to incubate inside the big pile, and then left them to fend for themselves like baby turtles who have to climb to the surface and find their way. I've included the video of the hummingbird below (if you don't see it, click here to go watch it on YouTube), because it was just fascinating. I love those little hummer birds, hopefully I'll have some in my backyard this year.

It was definitely one of the most interesting shows I've watched in a while. After it was done I was left with one thought: Life is amazing.

I mean, how often do we sit back and really ponder about life? No one birds how to do these things, why they should make a nest out of sticks or mud or leaves, they just DO them.

But beyond instincts and intuition, I got to thinking about how life is amazing on a cellular level. All life starts out as two tiny little cells, whether it's a person, a bird, a dog, a lion, a fish, anything. And somehow those cells divide, and somehow some of those cells become hair, and some become skin cells, and some of them become fingernails or claws, and some of them develop internal organs, and some of them develop noses and eyes, on and on. No one is making this happen, no one is telling these cells how to divide, it just happens!

Isn't that amazing? Like really, totally awesome, crazy amazing?