Illustration by Cara Seccafien
Makes children healthy, bloodthirsty, lean
By Isabelle Orr, Entertainment Editor
Dozens of Metro Vancouver citizens were startled last Tuesday at the sight of multiple packs of children running wild through national parks.
“I saw a boy carrying the head of a coyote on a stick, smeared in its blood,” a shaken John Tremblay told reporters. “He was yelling ‘SANCTUARY!’ and ripped out one of his canines.”
Confused? Don’t be. What appeared to be an emotionally scarring sight turns out to be yet another yuppie child-rearing trend.
“This is the best one yet!” Caroline Meyers, mother of Zach and Daniel, said at a press conference.
Started by parents, what is now known as the Feral Method (FM) involves releasing one’s children into the wild as early as five years of age.
“This way they learn all about the hardships of the adult world,” Alex Martin, father of Sage and Bristol, explained. “When another kid comes up and takes their sharpened stick or choking rope, they’ll realize that there’s no use crying over it. They’ll have to move past it, get moving, and hope that whoever stole it stands under a big cliff that they can drop or push a rock off of.”
Martin hasn’t seen either of his daughters in over two years. “There were reports of them around Seattle, but I’m not worried. I know that when it’s their time to return, they will. Hopefully wearing a necklace of the teeth of their enemies. Otherwise, what’s the point of returning home at all?”
Meyers, an elementary school teacher, explained that childhood is the perfect time to introduce the FM: “Children are extremely smart, and while their brains are young and pliable they can teach themselves the skills they need to survive. This includes finding running water, braiding grass, and finding a blunt object able to beat another child over the face and upper body with.”
Still, there are real dangers surrounding the method.
“This way, only the strongest children survive,” said Martin. “I actually had a third daughter, Marianne. She got taken by wolves around the one-month mark. I love my two remaining children very much.”
Despite its growing popularity, many argue that the FM is child cruelty. However, the practice’s advocates disagree.
“What’s crueler?” Martin asked. “Letting your child grow up in a sanitized, ‘safe’ environment that never allows them to access their primal state of being? Or having their humanity slowly ripped away from them piece by piece, until they are a shell of their formal selves? I know what I would choose if I could go back to my own childhood.”
Still worried about the effects on child development? Don’t be! The FM has been apocryphally proven to yield great results.
“My friends Peter and Joanne did this teaching method with their son Gabriel,” Meyers said in her closing statements. “And Gabriel is perfectly fine. In fact, he has a nice, steady job as a police officer.”
