Polar Bear

“I’m going outside,” said Grandpa Polar Bear to his young grandson. “You stay here where it is safe.”

“But Grandpa,” Polar Bear Jr. started to say.

“No,” interrupted Grandpa. “Junior you stay here.”

Junior saw the serious look in Grandpa’s eyebrows. He knew he could not disobey him because he knew he’d be in serious trouble if he did.

Grandpa went outside of the den expecting it to be bitterly cold. It was after all the middle of winter and he did happen to live in the middle of Canada’s vast frozen empire, the Arctic.
However, it wasn’t cold out at all. In fact, Grandpa noticed that it was very mild.

“Something isn’t right,” said Grandpa, walking around outside. “It is much too warm for this time of year.”

Grandpa walked down to the ocean shore and was shocked when he could actually see large patches of open ocean water. Normally at this time of the year, the ocean was covered in vast sheets of thick ice.

“This isn’t good,” said Grandpa. “This is really starting to scare me.”

Once down by the ocean, Grandpa walked carefully onto a large sheet of ice, being very careful with each step so as not to sink. Grandpa didn’t notice that the large sheet of ice started to move away quickly from the shore. Soon Grandpa was floating far away from the shore.

“This is ridiculous,” said Grandpa, angrily. “This ocean is usually covered in thick ice at this time of the year. Something is up and I don’t like it one bit.”

Grandpa was very angry about what was happening to ice. He knew that something was causing the ice to melt but he also had a strong suspicion that the ice melting was being caused by a force much greater than him, a force he would never be able to match.

“Man is to blame for this,” cried Grandpa, angrily. “There technology and growth is killing us.”

Grandpa had seen his fair share of man over the years. He wasn’t impressed at all at what he saw. He saw man go from living in ice houses and living off the land to building wooden houses and running around on motorized snowmobiles. He had a strange feeling that there were more to man than meets the eye. He had seen some of them come up to the arctic in flying machines and go hunting. He never saw the same hunters twice so he knew that there were more men in the world than the one’s that actually lived in the arctic. In fact, he knew that it was the men that came hunting that were to blame for the changes in the men of the arctic because he had seen them bring gifts to them, big gifts, expensive gifts, gifts that were ruining the environment.

Grandpa knew he had floated too far out from the shore and he knew the only way he was going to get back to land was to swim. Grandpa jumped into the arctic water and swam to shore. He was huffing and puffing when he finally dragged himself up on the shore and had to stop for a rest.

While taking his rest, Grandpa heard a deafening thunderous crash. He turned around just in time to see a large chunk of ice crash into the ocean from a nearby glacier.

“This is not good,” said Grandpa, crawling inside his den. “What is this world coming to?”

“Grandpa,” said Junior. “What is it? What is wrong?”

Grandpa sat down and had a long discussion with Junior about what was going on.

“So what is going to happen to us?” asked Junior.

“Nobody knows,” said Grandpa. “And probably nobody cares.”

“But there must be something we can do about it,” said Junior.

“That is the most unfortunate thing,” said Grandpa. “There really isn’t much we can do about it. It is man that is destroying us. It is man that is doing all this damage to us.”

“And,” said Junior. “We can’t stop man.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Grandpa. “The only thing we can do is try to be brave and strong and maybe, just maybe we can survive these changes that the environment is going through.”

“I sure hope so,” said Junior. “Because right now our future isn’t looking so bright.”