Colour tattoo of an adult giraffe and a young giraffe lying side by side, shown on the calf of a leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Adult giraffe and calf on the lower leg

Calf · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows a tall adult giraffe with its neck raised and a smaller young giraffe resting against its side, both lying down on a patch of ground. The outlines are dark and the coat patterns are filled with brown, orange and yellow tones, with soft shading along the bodies and legs. The design sits on the calf and is centred on the lower part of the leg, with the figures running diagonally up the frame.

Calf Giraffe Calf Animal Wildlife

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You hear the calf before you see it, a soft knocking of hooves on the hold boards as the Patience noses through the lock at Harrowgate Cut. Your father swears at the gate and you go below with the lantern, because someone has to. The hold smells of straw and hot tallow. The mother stands with her head up against the low beams, her neck bent like a question, and the calf is pressed close against her foreleg, all knees.

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The journey has been four days from the docks at Lynmouth, and the animals have eaten more than the coal. You bring the bucket of bran and the mother takes it without looking at you, watching the bank instead, where the willows drop their yellow into the water. Your father says the beasts were bought by a man with a park up the Wrensk and a gate of iron, and that a giraffe cannot lie down for long without its heart getting twisted, so keep them standing.

On the third night the calf will not rise. You sit on an upturned crate and hold the lantern while the mother folds herself down in the straw, slow as a tent coming down, and then the calf is tucked along her flank, its long face on her shoulder. Neither of them moves. Above you the boat rocks gently against the bank and the rope creaks through its cleat.

By morning the frost is on the tarpaulin. You wake with your cheek on your sleeve and the mother is still lying there, but her neck has come round in a great curve, and her muzzle rests on the calf's back, the way you might lay a hand on a sleeping child to be sure it still breathes. When your father slides the hatch open, she lifts her head and looks at him, and you understand she has been keeping watch on the pair of you.