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Dear Ms. Violins,
Your question, an excellent one by the way, requires at least two levels of age-appropriate information: One for very young children, such as your three year old, and another for somewhat more mature children better able to process information which may be perhaps complex, and potentially disturbing.
While Professor Coyote does not support presenting false information to children, nor nor in withholding facts from them, simply to avoid confronting such information, which may be necessary for their intellectual and/or emotional development, nor does he find it advisable to flood impressionable and innocent young minds with information they may find frightening, and for which they lack life experience to properly assimilate.
That being said, I think a proper response to the "Bambi's mother" question about which your three year old has such a tenacious curiousity would go something along these lines:
"After Bambi's mommy's guts got blown to shreds by the hunter's bullet, she died, and of course her carcass rotted away. Eventually nothing was left of Bambi's mother, except her skeleton, perhaps with a few tufts of fur and dried, stringy ligaments hanging from it. But what a jolly and happy skeleton she was! To this very day, the skeleton of Bambi's mommy laughs and dances every night, deep in the cold, dark, foggy forest, luring curious and unwary children to certain doom."
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Harvested deer: Deer harvested by hunters are proudly displayed to demonstrate the hunters' skill and prowess, and then are transported to the hunters' homes or to cooperating butcher shops, where they are cut into delicious venison steaks, or ground up, generally with beef fat added, or made into venison sausage, again often with beef fat added, or salted and dried, resulting in tasty venison jerky. |
For somewhat older, more sophisticated children, one might wish to supply additional information, such as the principles of game management, deer herd culling, game harvesting, and field dressing deer (see illustration) that are so harvested, perhaps explaining that Bambi's mother was shot largely because experts in game management had determined that there were too many does that year, and hunters were encouraged to kill more of them along with the bucks which hunters often prefer because of their decorative antlers, which make amusing hood ornaments on their 4X4 pickup trucks.
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| Field dressing a deer: Many deer shot by hunters are gutted, disembowled and bled, to both render the carcass lighter and easier to transport, as well as to hinder spoilage of the meat during transport from the field to deer camp. |
Professor Coyote himself believes that a spiritual and religious perspective has great value in building a strong foundation for a child's (and an adult's) sense of his or her place in human society that may be far more valuable than simply a set of highly debatable beliefs concerning God and religion, so optionally, at the disgression of, and according to the personal religious beliefs of the child's parents, the spiritual implications of the death of Bambi's mother might be discussed.
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Jesus: cared enough to die for man's sins, but left animals in the lurch. No Salvation and heaven or eternal life for them. Sorry. |
For example, you might explain to your child that the death of Bambi's mother is especially tragic, since, while God created all things, he did not care about the animals he created enough to imbue them with a soul, nor any other mechanism for Salvation and Eternal Life. Therefore, even animals which are wise and good, like Bambi's mother, simply die horrible, terrifying and painful deaths, after pointless lives of misery and near starvation. Thus, when Bambi's mother died at the hands of the hunter, she simply ceased to exist, and rotted away, with no hope of an afterlife or Salvation, and even her memory would only last but a very brief time in the limited animal-sentience of Bambi, who himself would probably be similarly shot and killed soon enough.
Professor Coyote
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