By Jennifer S. Holland

Meagan Howard and her close friend Samantha Kuusk, both students, lived together in Denver. On mornings when Samantha had class, Meagan would watch her 2-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Also part of the household was Meagan's pet, Willie, a parrot called a Quaker — a particularly intelligent and chatty breed that loves to clown around. Willie was indeed funny and a terrific talker. In addition to a few off-color works learned from Meagan's dad, he picked up quite a healthy vocabulary ("Silly Willie" was a favorite saying) and became a great mimic — of cats, dogs, chickens and humans kissing. Plus, he could do a spot-on whistle of "The Andy Griffith Show" theme song.

One day in 2006, with Samantha at school, Hannah had perched herself in front of morning cartoons while Meagan fussed in the kitchen, preparing the little girl her favorite breakfast treat, a Pop-Tart. When the toaster spit out the pastry, Meagan placed it at the center of the kitchen table to cool. She peeked at Hannah and, confident the child was fully engaged with the TV, slipped out quickly to use the bathroom.

"I was gone maybe 30 seconds," Meagan recalls. "And suddenly, I heard the bird." Willie was "going crazy, squawking and shrieking."She heard two very distinct words from the parrot's mouth. Mama. Baby.

Repeated over and over again. "Mama! Baby! Mama! Baby!" Meagan ran out of the bathroom to find Hannah in the kitchen, holding the partly eaten Pop-Tart, gasping for air, her face and lips a terrifying shade of blue. And Willie still shrieking his refrain.

"Hannah had climbed up on a chair and gotten the Pop-Tart and she was clearly choking on it," says Meagan. "I grabbed her and immediately started doing the Heimlich maneuver until the piece came flying out."

The bird quieted down and Meagan burst into tears, relief washing over her; Hannah was fine, already smiling her big smile.

When Meagan told Samantha what happened, "she was so grateful, thanking me for what I did," Meagan says. "But I said, ‘Don't thank me! It was Willie who was the hero!' "

What's really surprising, the women say, is that though Willie knew the word "mama," he'd never before combined it with the word "baby." 

And he hasn't said them together since. Samantha always had a soft spot for her friend's pet, but after that, "the soft spot grew and grew. She was just so grateful," Meagan says. "I know Willie will forever be Sam's hero."

Around lunchtime on a summer day in August 1996, a little boy visiting the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago, Illinois, eager to see big animals close up, climbed up where he shouldn't have gone. He lost his footing and somersaulted over the barrier, falling some 20 feet down into the gorilla habitat.

Craig Demitros, then a lead zookeeper and now curator of primates, was having lunch just outside the exhibit. He knew something bad had happened when he heard people yelling and saw frantic families pushing through the emergency exit. He was soon announcing a "signal 13" — a potential life-threatening situation.

Then one of the gorillas, an 8-year-old female named Binti Jua, approached the boy's motionless body.

By the time Craig and two colleagues looked over the edge of the wall, "Binti was below us with her 17-month-old baby on her back and a 3-year-old human boy draped on her right arm." Zoo staff worked at lightning speed, using water hoses to herd the rest of the gorillas away from the boy and into their night quarters. Meanwhile, Binti carried the child about 75 feet, across a stream and to a log away from the other animals.

At one point, her back to the animals, she seemed to rock the child back and forth like a mother would a sleeping baby. Finally, she set him down. And then she joined her gorilla kin as they moved inside.

The boy began to regain consciousness after Binti left, and zoo staff, along with paramedics who happened to be near, descended, stabilized him, carried him out of the exhibit, and loaded him into a zoo ambulance.

Was Binti a hero? Some say absolutely. Others are more careful about a label that suggests a purposeful action."We can only speculate about her motivation," Craig says. "Was she actually trying to protect the boy from other gorillas? We just don't know. 

"The fact that she had her own baby also might be a factor," he adds. It was fortunate that the child was unconscious, he points out. If he'd been crying and flailing about, Binti might have seen him as a threat. "We were lucky in so many ways that day."Binti Jua's name is Swahili, and means "Daughter of Sunshine," which seems appropriate for an animal that gave so many days to a child that might otherwise have missed out.

That child, now a man and long recovered from the fall, has remained out of the public eye. "We believe he returned to the zoo a few times after this happened," Craig says, "but anonymously."

Three generations of Binti's family now share the Brookfield exhibit, and she has risen from position of awkward youngster to unlikely hero to matriarch.

One evening in Olgara Village, West Bengal, India, where people worship the Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesha, a lone forest elephant broke down a door and crashed through a wall, likely in search of food. The flimsy structure was no match for the huge animal, and pieces of the home rained down.

But then came the sound that changed everything. The elephant suddenly found himself standing over the bed of a crying child. And he stopped his devastating charge.

For some reason, instead of ignoring the baby or swiping her aside, the animal stretched out his trunk and began to pluck debris off the cot, cleaning up all the rubble that had fallen on the girl.

It was as if an empathy switch were flipped in the elephant's brain, perhaps by the sounds of the girl's distress. (Elephants are known to respond to a herd-mate's sounds of suffering with caresses and soothing chirps and rumbles.)

To the child's parents, it was simply a miracle. And then came a second miracle of sorts: The elephant turned and walked away, returning to the forest without further commotion.