The Parable of the Caribou

Josh lives.  Josh walks.  Josh breathes.  Josh speaks. 

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”What do children learn from violent video games and violent movies?”

Josh spoke thus:

A boy was watching a caribou die.

“Why do you have to watch that?” his mother asked the boy, “Why don’t you find your friends and play a game?”

“I’m watching this,” the boy said.

“You’re always watching something,” the mother said.

“There’s always something to watch,” the boy told her.

“You don’t have to always be watching,” the mother told her son, “You should stop watching.”

The boy did not stop watching the caribou.

As the boy watched, the caribou was dying.

The caribou had been wounded by a huntsman’s bullet.  The hole in the caribou’s left flank was slowly sapping the caribou’s strength.  Each breath was more shallow than the previous breath.  A broken rib, perhaps, prevented proper lung expansion.

The cold, also, was a strain on the caribou.  Deprived of oxygen by the inefficient working of its shallow-breathing lungs, the caribou had collapsed in knee-deep snow.  The snow was not what froze the caribou, however.  The caribou was slowly sapped of heat by each beat of its heart.  Each beat of its heart pushed blood out of the hole in the caribou’s flank, and with the blood, heat.

Steam jetted from the nostrils of the dying caribou.

The boy eyed each exhalation with the curiosity of the predator.

“This really is too much,” the mother said.  She tugged at the boy’s arm.  “You are a boy.”

“I’m not a girl!” the boy exclaimed, “It’s okay for boys to see death.”

“If you were a girl, you might know not to watch,” the mother said, “You might know pity.”

The caribou was beyond pity.  Its last breaths were labored despite its visceral determination not to die.  The boy may have noted the pinkish tinge of blood in the steam from the caribou’s nostrils.

“It’s dying,” the boy said.

“Of course it’s dying,” the mother said, “You don’t have to watch it die.”

“It’s bleeding to death,” the boy said.

“Of course it’s bleeding to death,” the mother said, “Come away.”

“Let the boy watch,” the boy’s father told the mother.

“No boy should watch that,” the mother told the boy’s father, “How can you let him watch that?”

The boy’s father replied, “I didn’t shoot that animal for the boy to turn away.”