Menu
header photo

Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.

Don’t feed moose during the winter: you will kill them

A recent news story from Idaho shares details about two moose (a mother with her calf) arriving on the outskirts of a small town, perhaps because the human presence, which the moose do not fear, keeps their predators away. Seeing that the moose were not eating, a local woman fed them. Two days later, both animals were dead.

The reason, the experts explained, is easy to understand if you are aware of the fact that, although moose do not hibernate like bears, their body functions change profoundly during the winter. In those cold months, moose hardly eat, so their bodies don't even have the ability to process food. That's why, in the winter, moose only eat with twigs and tree bark.

But the local woman, believing the moose were hungry and believing that she was doing them a favor, left them fruits and other foods high in sugar and calories that, for some reason (scent, taste, color), attracted the moose. They ate the food, but, unable to process it, the animals died despite wildlife experts’ efforts to save them.

The tragic situation teaches us several lessons. First, the woman who tried to help did so on the assumption that the moose were looking for food and that, since it was winter, the animals needed nutritious food. Those two incorrect assumptions led to the death of two animals that only a couple of days before were completely healthy.

Even worse, when the wildlife experts explained to the woman that the death of the moose was due to what she did (and, as a consequence, she was going to be fined), the woman refused to accept those explanations indicating that she “did not believe in science” and that surely the animals were already sick (autopsies confirmed that they were not).

This is an example that we human beings are so disconnected from nature that we mistakenly project into nature the way we live and that, even worse, we ignore and refuse to know and respect natural cycles, whether in the animal world or in even in ourselves.

Second, the death of the moose holds another important lesson if the incident is taken as a parable: in the same way that animals, no matter how healthy they are, cannot receive certain foods when it is not the time for them to eat that food for then the consequences will be tragic, , in the same way people, however intelligent they may be, cannot receive certain lessons or knowledge if it is not their time to receive them.

As someone with more than four decades as a teacher (mostly adult education), I can say that I have seen that situation many times and I must confess that many other times I myself have forgotten that there is a time and a proper moment for everything. either to learn or not to learn.

It seems that, at least for now, the metaphorical winter of the pandemic does not allow us to “eat” any solid knowledge. 

Go Back