( left )The Kenyan village dog who rescued baby 'Angel' last week stands outside its home yesterday. ( right )An abandoned two-week-old baby girl christened 'Angel' is being carried at the Kenyatta National hospital in Nairobi yesterday. - REUTERS
NAIROBI, (Reuters):
A BABY girl rescued by a dog after being dumped in a Kenyan forest to die was offered homes across the world yesterday, with callers from as far away as Japan offering to care for the infant, dubbed Angel by nurses.
Catherine Gicheru, news editor of the Daily Nation, said her newspaper had been swamped by calls from would be adoptive parents in Japan, Venezuela and South Africa after carrying the story of the baby saved from a lonely death by a female dog.
"She was thrown away like garbage, so she has touched a lot of hearts. Everyone is looking at it like a miracle," Gicheru said.
FOUND HER IN A FOREST
The baby, estimated to be about two weeks old, was handed over to police by a family whose unnamed dog found her in a forest near Nairobi as she foraged for food for her puppies.
The dog carried the baby in her mouth across a busy road and set her down beside her puppies in the compound of the family's iron-sheeted shack.
"Two of my children, Colins and Kennedy, came running to say there was a baby crying in the compound but they could not trace it," the Nation quoted housewife Mary Adhiambo as saying.
"I followed them outside and we started looking around the compound and a nearby plot. I saw my dog, which I have had for the last five years, lying protectively with a puppy beside a soiled baby wrapped in a torn black cloth. I held the baby in my arms and carried it into the house."
Hannah Gakuo, a spokeswoman for Kenyatta National Hospital, said the girl was stable and undergoing tests. Several callers to the hospital had offered material and financial support as well as new homes, she said.
Once the doctors were satisfied she was out of danger she would be handed to the government's Department of Children's Services, which would handle applications from would-be adoptive parents.
