Photo by me
In the first trimester of school, we read Squirm by Carl Hiaasen. It’s a story about family relationships and animals. Billy (the main character) discovers that his father does a lot more than just work for the government. Billy and his step-sister, Summer, find out more about their dad and help him try to save an endangered panther. After reading the book, we each picked our own endangered animal to learn about. Mine was the polar bear. After lots of research, we started writing stories from our animals’ point of view. Then we met with Peg Gignoux (a local artist) to make handmade books for our endangered animal stories. First, we picked our background. Second, we added more to the more details, like nature, water and our animals. Finally, when our stories were finished, we glued them to the book. There is a photo of my finished book above, and my story is below.
Philip the Polar Bear
Yawn, oh, hello there, my name is Philip the Polar Bear. My scientific name is Ursus Maritimus, but you can call me Phil. You can find me in Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland, or Norway. Every day, I wake up in my den and look out at the vast snowy mountains of my home, reaching for the sky. The snow is like a gigantic blanket of white covering the hills. The wind whistles softly over the mountains. It’s always quiet up in the mountains, and I’m a solitary animal, so I don’t get a lot of visitors except the occasional poacher. After I wake up, I go try to get some food. I love eating. I need to eat a lot so I can grow big and keep myself warm with two thick layers of fat. That’s hard when I rarely eat. I have so much fat that it takes up 50% of my body weight. Crazy, right? I normally weigh 800-1300 pounds. That’s pretty heavy. Alright, let’s head over to the ice, or what’s left of it.
My favorite food is seal, but it’s getting harder and harder to find them… Because of climate change, the sea ice I hunt on has been melting earlier in the winter and coming back later in the fall. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky today. My tummy rumbles as I notice I’ll be hungry for another night. I’m starving because of you. I’m so hungry I could eat ten horses! This makes me so mad. Why are you humans warming the Earth so much? Not only are the places where I hunt getting smaller, but also the snow and ice on land are slowly melting too. Some people are even hunting me for my fur! You people are warm enough. If you don’t mind, I want to keep my coat.
After a long day of failed hunting and walking around with the fear of poachers, I hike back to my lonely den with an empty stomach. It’s always hard to sleep with no food. Run-ins with harmful hunters are the worst. They come storming into my quiet wasteland with their snowmobiles exploding with noise and their guns sounding like thunder. Another horrible thing poachers bring is bear spray. I hate that stuff! It messes with my eyes and nose. The second worst thing to happen is when I’m hunting on the ice, and I hear cracks. First, it starts slow, then boom! Water rushes around me, and I’m fully submerged. It’s as fast as a blink of the eye. I’m a good swimmer, but when I get out of the water, it’s freezing.
Please help me, there are only about 26,000 of my kind left! If polar bears went extinct, the Arctic food chain would be destroyed! The number of seals would skyrocket, and the economy would collapse! You can help by using more renewable energy and making less greenhouse gas, or you could donate to causes that help me, like Polar Bears International or The World Wildlife Fund. People like them track polar bears and climate change to save us from hunters and starvation. Help me, NOW! I’m standing on thin ice here!
