As my daughter announced accurately this morning: "Snow has covered everything in a chilly white blanket!". Before you go thinking that she is a bit precocious for a two year old, she was quoting from "Tiger in the Snow" - a pleasing little tale of a cat improvising a sledge out of an ironing board and then mowing down a henhouse. Jamie Oliver would no doubt not be pleased.
We believe in nature red in tooth and claw in our household. I see no sense in shielding my little ones from the harsh reality that beats below the surface of nature's beauty.
I explain to her that the cat battering through the flimsy walls of the henhouse can be seen as a metaphor for the unstoppable onslaught of natural selection. The cat atop the careering ironing board, is engaged in its own struggle for survival. In its own way the cat is propelling the hens (or the descendants of the hens) to build ever more effective henhouses, so that next time the cat will smack into a brick wall. And thus the genetic arms race will continue for millennia.
My daughter just grins and says: Read it again.
Nightcap
15 years ago
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