When the Forest Goes Dry- Climate Change in our Backyard (Alberta Edition) Group 3- Jasmine, Nischant, Eik, Raeesa, Moomal, Sylvia

Oct 7, 2015 by Jasmine Sekhon

Here is a short story we wrote about climate change in our backyard.

Every day, three friends - Maple the moose, Damon the deer, and Bim the bear - would meet up to play games and have fun. One bright and sunny morning, the three best friends met up in the grove and decided to play a fun game of tag. “Hey guys!” Maple the moose said.

“Hi!” replied Damon the deer as well as Bim the bear. “Let’s play tag everybody!” Damon said excitedly.

“Okay, ready, set go!” Bim said and everyone ran off for Maple was the one “it.”

The three friends had a blast playing until suddenly Bim ran into a clearing. There were almost no trees there and the ones close by were drying out. He bellowed with his loud voice, “Maple, Damon, come quick!” 

Damon and Maple reached quickly and looked around. “Woah. What happened here?” Damon asked.

“The trees, they’re all dried out!” Maple replied worriedly.

Bim looked around silently. “Now that I think about it guys.. Our whole forest is drying out, but we’ve been so distracted while playing that we never paid any attention. Haven’t you seen the trees? They’re all dying!” Bim said. Maple and Damon were silent, thinking as well. All of a sudden Maple burst into tears.

“Our home is going away! Where will we play hide and seek and tag now?” She wailed.

As the friends began to walk back home, a bird landed in front of them. “Why are you crying?” She asked Maple. Maple gave the whole explanation of the trees drying out because of some strange reason and how she and her friends would lose their homes. The bird tilted her head and looked to be in deep thought. “This, my little friends, isn’t due to a some strange reason, it’s because of Global Warming!” the bird peeped ominously. Global Warming? What the heck was that? It sounded like a really bad thing, the three friends thought. The bird, sensing the

confusion between the three animals, continued on talking about Global Warming.

“Global Warming, my little friends, is the warming of the whole, entire Earth. It’s when the humans create lots of gases that are bad for our planet. Those gases can come from anything, including buildings, cars on the road, using coal and gas and the list goes on and on. All these gases trap in heat, making our planet much, much hotter, which then dries out forests, plants, lakes, oceans, and rivers. That’s why our forest is drying out,” the bird explained. The     friends’ eyes were wide as they took all this new information. 

“What can we do to help our planet get better?” Damon asked.

“Yeah, what can we do? I don’t want our home to be gone forever,” Bim added, worriedly, as Maple nodded her head in agreement. The bird hesitated before replying, “The thing is, us animals can’t really do anything about Global Warming. It’s only the humans who can help and change their actions.”

“What? How can they help us? What can they do so we can keep on playing with each other and not lose our homes?” Maple and Damon asked. “There’s lots of things humans can do. They can recycle, they can reduce the amounts of wasteful things they use, humans can reduce the amount of Greenhouse Gases they make and more. Every little thing helps,” the little bird replied.

“Well if it’s so easy, then why isn’t everyone doing it,” Bim asked, with a stern face.

“It is true, for many people don’t choose to change their behavior to stop global warming... Why? Well... I am just a little bird so I wouldn’t know.”

“Then I guess all we can do is hope that the humans do their part so that everything will be better,” Maple said. The bird fluttered away, the three forest friends wandered off. Would they ever get to play like they did, again - before global warming became a dramatic problem - ?  

Post comment