The first thing every giraffe does is fall 6 feet.

A patient comes in with a flesh eating bacteria that is rapidly spreading up their leg. The only way to save their life is to remove their leg.

So what do you do? To help the patient is to accept that you must also harm them.

You're a good doctor. Of course you remove the leg and save the patient's life, because trying to exercise a choice that will result in no harm is impossible where there are only two bad outcomes, but one is unquestionably worse.

When ranchers in Utah's Rich County found eighteen sheep killed in March 2022, they assumed coyotes. USDA Wildlife Services flew a plane over the kill site and found something feeding on the carcasses that had only been confirmed in the state eight times in forty years. It was a wolverine. Utah sits at the extreme southern margin of the wolverine's North American range. The animal is built for the deep snow and high alpine of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, country above ten thousand feet where the winters last eight months and the terrain rejects everything that is not specifically engineered to survive it. A wolverine showing up in Utah's ranch country was not a routine predator complaint. It was a biological event. State wildlife managers had no protocol for it because they had never needed one. Biologists set specialized barrel traps near the sheep carcasses. Catching a wolverine in a live trap is considered one of the most difficult captures in North American wildlife management. The animal is trap-smart, solitary, covers enormous distances daily, and operates almost exclusively in terrain that humans struggle to access on foot. The odds of a wolverine walking into a barrel trap were close to zero. The next morning, a sheepherder found one of the trap doors dropped. Inside was a healthy, twenty-eight-pound male, estimated at three to four years old. It was the first wolverine ever live-captured by biologists in Utah's history. The team sedated him, packed his body in ice to keep his core temperature stable during the examination, fitted him with a GPS tracking collar, and released him into the deep snow of the Uinta Mountains. For researchers who had spent careers studying an animal they almost never got to see, that collar was the first real-time data source on wolverine movement the state had ever produced. The data that came back over the next twenty-five days confirmed what wolverine biologists in other states had documented but Utah had never been able to verify on its own ground. The animal logged over 195 miles of travel in less than a month. He did not drift south toward lower elevations or leave the state. He locked into the high peaks of the Uintas above ten thousand feet and ran massive looping circuits through avalanche chutes, rocky ridgelines, and snowfields deep enough to bury a man standing upright. The daily distances he covered would qualify as an endurance event for a human athlete on flat ground. He was doing it through the most physically punishing terrain in the state, in winter, alone, at elevation, without stopping. The eighteen dead sheep that started the whole sequence were never repeated. The wolverine moved into the high country and stayed there, operating in a landscape so remote and so hostile that the only evidence of his existence was the GPS signal pinging coordinates from ridgelines that no person had visited in months. The collar proved what the forty years of scattered sightings could only suggest. The wolverine was not passing through Utah. It was living there, quietly covering nearly two hundred miles of frozen alpine rock in less than a month, completely invisible to every human being in the state.

Jon and Martha find the Kryptonian ship in their corn field, but when they open it the baby is not well. He’s traveled light years, and even at the fastest speeds, it was days or even weeks. What fluid was sustaining him has been gone for some time.

They work a farm. They know what a sick baby looks like.

They take the baby inside anyway. It’s far too late for anything to be open, so they break out the milk replacer for the livestock. The bottle they find has had a goat kid sucking on it, but they wash it good, because what other choice do they have?

The baby doesn’t take to the bottle well. He barely eats.

They both know a lack of appetite is a death knell.

“I can’t watch a baby die,” Martha says. She’s done it before. She and Jon struggled to have kids. The closest they got — well. It’s a hard memory for them both.

“I know, love.” Jon’s a good old country boy. He grew up being told it’s a man’s job to take the burden. He’ll take it now. “Go to bed. I’ll stay with him.”

Sure, they both know Martha won’t sleep, but at least she won’t have to see.

Jon takes the wee babe out onto the porch. He tries to poke more milk down him. Rubs his chest, bounces him, pushes the bottle past his lips, every damn thing he can do. The hours are long and hard, but he would never forgive himself if he didn’t try.

The baby continues to fade.

The eastern sky starts to lighten.

“I’m sorry, little fellow,” Jonathan whispers. It’s not long now. He can feel it in his bones. He’s held plenty of animals as they died. He’s waiting for that long last exhale. “Sorry you came all this way and this is your welcome. Can’t even enjoy the sunrise.”

He told himself he wouldn’t cry until the boy was gone. Wasn’t fair, that his last moments would be a man crying instead of comforting him, but Jon does his best to do both at the same time. He cradles the poor little thing even as his shoulders shake.

The sun breaks over the horizon, and light floods the porch. Jon closes his eyes against it and his tears.

It’s a hiccup that is the first sign something changed. Then the wiggling.

Jon nearly drops the baby in shock.

When he looks down, the little boy sure hasn’t died. He’s got this rosy little glow to his cheeks and his eyes are bright. He’s throwing those little hands around like he’s trying to figure out how they work, but he seems to be trying to reach for the sun.

Jon just stares at him until the baby gets frustrated enough with his clumsy limbs that he opens his mouth to tell the world about it.

The baby’s cry is so powerful Jon falls right out of his rocker. It’s a miracle he doesn’t launch the poor thing.

Only thing he can think to do with a screaming baby that’s about to take his eardrums out is shove that bottle right in that open mouth.

The little boy shuts right up and clings to the bottle for dear life as he drinks with a fury.

When Martha comes stumbling out wild-eyed in her jammies, Jon’s sitting on the porch with a grin as bright as the dawn despite the fact his ears are still ringing.

this is emmett and cullen they are best friends

Dog: :) fine, thanks

Me: you will not earn what you desire by banging the cabinet door.

My cat: This is a test of wills, is it not? We shall see if your ability to put up with my incessant banging outlasts my eternal lust for snackie treats. Years of conditioning have hardened me for this purpose. bang bang bang

Me: ksst!

My cat, throwing herself to the ground like she's been shot: Oh! Oh I have been assailed in my own home! Have mercy, have pity! Surely in the cruel darkness of your heart there is some mote of goodness that might stay your hand! Do not strike me, I pray you!

Me: ok