I was doing some window shopping downtown when I noticed the young caribou. It was sitting on the sidewalk, back uncomfortably propped up against a wall, its forepaws outstretched, a hat precariously balanced between them. Leaning against the wall next to it was a flimsy sign which read, “Buddy, can U spare some grass?”
I dropped a handful of change into its hat (not being the type to regularly carry grass on my person). “Is there anything else I can do?” I asked, concerned.
“Got any cigarettes?” the caribou rasped.
“Sorry,” I replied. “I don’t smoke.” After a couple of seconds of tense silence, I continued: “What happened to you?”
The caribou shrugged, almost dropping its hat. “Progress, I guess,” it answered. “But, don’t waste your pity on me. I don’t want it.”
“Sorry. You wanna talk about it?”
The caribou looked at me with emotion-filled eyes. “Sure,” it sighed, “why not? It all started a year ago. I was running with a herd that flirted with the Yukon/Alaska border, We were 180,000 strong, and we didn’t stop for nobody. What the hell, you know? We were protected by the Alaskan National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which proclaimed the land as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“Well, that’s what we thought, anyway.
“They started putting refineries, factories and offices up during the summer. That destroyed a lot of the land we used to calf on. Some of the rest was fenced off for future use. We’d been grazing and calfing on that land for thousands of years, but I guess that wasn’t as important as your need to get oil out of Alaska…”
“Hey, not me!” I protested. “The Canadian government was against this from the beginning. It even made some of the adjoining land in the Yukon a wildlife park – the North Yukon National Park. The decision to let drilling start there was made by US Interior Secretary Donald Hodel.”
“Yeah…whatever…” the caribou said as somebody tossed a dollar into its hat. “Thanks. Appreciate it. Look, it’s just too damn bad that an American decision could have such a devastating effect on Canadian wildlife.”
“What exactly happened?”
“You sure you don’t have a cigarette?”
“Sorry.”
The caribou crossed its hindpaws, hoping to avoid getting a cramp. It waited for a fire engine, siren blaring, to pass, then continued: Last year, we had a brutal winter. Because our food supply had largely gone south, a quarter of the herd died. I lost Mary around then. Well, we may only be caribou, but we can read the handwriting on the refinery wall as well as anybody. Some of the older members of the herd were too set in their ways to do anything, but, pretty soon, most of us went south, too.
“A lot of us ended up in zoos, of course. People couldn’t see past our species; and, anyway, who wants to retrain a caribou to do work that a human can do? Some of us ended up pulling plows in the west. It’s not that we wanted to take work away from horses, you understand – it was quite a comedown, when you think about it. We got as much pride as any animal…present company excepted, of course. But, a caribou’s gotta do whatever it can to survive.
“I heard a couple of caribou from our herd made it as far as Hollywood. Course, there ain’t much call for caribou in the movies, but everybody’s got a right to dream, right?”
“That’s some hard luck story,” I commented.
“The zoos are full of ’em,” the caribou replied. “They say things are gonna get better soon, that a change in Administration is going to bring environmental prosperity. They say that it’s just around the corner, but I don’t know…”
“You mustn’t give up hope.”
The caribou laughed nastily. “Hope? The ecological balance of the land took hundreds of thousands of years to develop. You can’t just use it up and expect to be able to put things right when you’re finished. Besides, whatever happens, it’ll be too late to help me or my herd.”
A man in a three piece suit hurried past us, being careful not to look down. Over his shoulder, he sneered, “Why don’t you get a job?”
The caribou looked at him benignly.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. The caribou thought for a moment before answering.
“Think I’ll get me a guitar…”