Animal Gratitude

There was a bee in the kitchen buzzing against the window. So, it not being a wasp which I would have swotted (because I still remember those stings I'd had as a child), I took a glass tumbler, placed it over the bee, carefully slid a card over the opening of the tumbler thus trapping the bee inside, then I took bee and card and tumbler to the back door and removed the card to let the bee go free.
But I made sure that as soon as the bee was flying out of the tumbler I shot inside the house and slammed the back door after me - because there was every possibilty that the bee would turn and attack me.
Gratitude in animals? Forget it.
The best example I've seen of this lack of gratitude was in a TV programme about wild life in Africa.
A rhino had fallen into a swamp and was slowly sinking in it so that all that was visible was a front leg and a horned head.
The intrepid team of TV film makers got out, tied ropes around the beast's neck and leg and, using their jeep, slowly pulled the rhino from the swamp.
That part of the operation had been filmed successfully. The next scene wasn't filmed at all, only hurried camera still shots had been managed, most of them at angles other than horizontal.
The reason? Well, of course, the rhino, as soon as it was free, charged with its horned head the jeep and its occupants. Naturally. What else would you expect? Gratitude?
Remember that when you next see a rhino in a swamp. Or see Androcles with his lion.