musings of a 3-year-old
on sunday we sat down around 8 to watch planet earth on the discovery channel. our friend griff had suggested watching it and i had heard good things elsewhere. griff’s main take on it was that it really shows how great God’s creation is and how everythng works together and works well.
it was not long before hannah’s bedtime, so she sat down to watch it with us. this segment was about the great plains on each continent and some of the animals that live there. it was really cool. there were tense moments where our first instinct was to change the channel, but they turned into teaching moments for hannah. the first was a fox who was trying to penetrate a colony of geese. for a while the geese handled him pretty well, but they left their nest vulnerable, so the fox either ran off with eggs or baby goslings. we had to explain that out of survival some animals had to kill other animals to eat them. they handled it well and hannah seemed to understand.
another situation was a night scene at a watering hole in africa. it seems that at night the elephants lose their upper hand. they showed how a pack of lions could attack an elephant, separate it from the herd, and take it down. again, it was not a violent scene, but nature at work. that elephant fed a pack of lions for a week. again, we had to teach hannah about survival of animals. i think she handled it well.
but the best part of the evening was as we were going to bed. you see, hannah sleeps with a stuffed elephant named ellie. ellie has been around since day one when aunt julie gave it to hannah. it is a rare night when we go to bed without ellie. hannah’s comment on this night was, “the lions can’t get my ellie because she is stuffed!” pretty cute! even cuter is that she constantly holds ellie by her tail so as to keep the rest of ellie’s body soft. it works in her mind.
when i was telling griff about this story, we then traveled down the road of what happened in the garden of eden. when everything was in perfect peace and harmony, did the animals eat each other? my initial thought was that God provided food for them through the garden where they didn’t have to attack others. there truly was peace. it wasn’t until the fall of man and the closing of the garden that the animal world became survival of the fittest. anybody have any other input? just a curiousity.