With temperatures dropping to eighty degrees below zero, the frozen regions of North America are usually considered wastelands where nothing can survive. Actually, many creatures, including the caribou, live in these regions.
A full-grown caribou weighs from three hundred to seven hundred pounds, stands four feet tall, and is six to eight feet long. The Creator has provided them with all they need to survive in the cold, including soft, thick, insulated fur. They require much food, yet they live where grass and leaves are not plentiful. The Lord God has created a special food for them called reindeer moss or lichen. This grows rapidly in the summer months, covering the ground and clinging to trunks and branches of trees. It is a rich food and can be eaten year-round. In deep snow where there are no trees supporting lichen growth, a God-given instinct tells the caribou to search for it on the ground. Caribou have sharp hooves that dig through snow and ice to reach this food. Most of their wakeful time in winter is spent digging and eating.
Caribou are about the most restless of all animals. They roam in large herds, numbering in the thousands. These large herds devour all food wherever they stop, and they must move on each day to find more. During their migrations, they travel at least six hundred miles northward in summer, where calves are born in late May or June, and then return in winter. Nothing stops these migrations. If mountains are too high to cross, the caribou go around them. If lakes and rivers are not frozen, they swim through them.
Both male and female caribou have antlers, but the male’s antlers grow much larger than the female’s. These can be used as dangerous weapons along with their strong legs and sharp hooves. Many a wolf, attempting to overcome a caribou, has learned too late that it is no match against a strong, healthy caribou. Yet wolves do follow herds, and if they discover a calf separated from the others or a crippled adult, they will successfully attack and kill it.
This reminds us of Satan, the evil one who, we are warned, “[walks] about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:88Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: (1 Peter 5:8)). Boys and girls need the protection of their parents. A godly family will ask the Lord each day to help guide and preserve them from Satan’s attacks. All the family members, both young and old, need to feed continually on the Bible, God’s living Word, so they do not become weak and vulnerable to the enemy. Let us thank God for His wonderful promise: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. . . . They shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:3131But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)).
ML-02/23/2003