Emily is friends with Little Bear and the other characters. She talks to them, and they talk back. But the funny thing is there are two domestic animals: Cat (a cat) and Tutu (the dog); one talks and the other doesn't. WHY? And the reason for this is in the title of this blog, and I will explain.
This all takes place in Emily's imagination, and she grieves on innocent animals who were killed by her father and then stuffed (and he also likes to collect bugs sometimes). She wants to give them life, and that's how she copes with what her father does as a hobby. So who ever talks in the show (even an extra or side character) isn't real, except for Emily. That also explains why most characters are named after who they are as animals.
So her Granny is dead, and Emily got to keep and take care of Tutu. And she imagines her Granny to life in her head, and probably exaggerates who she is as this amazing adventurous person that used to be in a circus. And Emily gets to live with her imaginary LIVING Granny in a forest where her imagined animal friends thrive and live happy if she imagines them to be.
So who ever doesn't talk is real, and alive. So is Lucy real? Yes, but she isn't REAL real, not alive real, just a doll real.
In that episode where Little Bear meets Emily for the first time. At the end of that episode when Little Bear helps Emily get back to where her family is camping, Emily's parents are seen down below from the hill where Emily and Little Bear both stand, and are not a talking or taking a major part in the episode characters.
When Little Bear and Emily finally get to the camp where her parents are, but when Emily invited Little Bear to meet her parents, he hesitates and makes an excuse that he hears his mother calling. Emily imagines this because she doesn't want Little Bear to meet her father who killed the real living little bear cub.
How does this all work?: Well for starters when Little Bear and Emily met, Little Bear falls out of the tree, and coincidentally Emily is right below when he falls flat on his back. But in reality Emily saw her father shot the poor bear cub from the tree, and the body falls down. She imagines this to cope with the reality that her father killed an innocent cub.
Her father wouldn't bring his daughter off hunting, so she must have wondered off and followed him (to probably give him some cookies) and saw what he did. When he was gone she went up to the tree where the cub was shot from and started creating a story, honoring the cub who lost her/his life, and possibly wished she could have stopped it from happening.
So she makes Little Bear adventurous and curious, and she makes him helpful by showing her which way to go to head back to the river where her parents are when she already knows. She makes him have the same favorite kind of cookie that she and the kind her doll Lucy likes. She makes him kind and. Her father likes fish, and she makes Little Bear's the same way and make him a fishermen.
The cub's parents were never killed to Emily's knowledge. So she imagines his father away from home as a fishermen out in sea, and his mother waiting for him at home for lunch. And Emily didn't know if the cub had brothers or sisters or not, she didn't see any around and decided to make Little Bear an only cub.
The other three characters real life possible deaths:
Owl: Killed by her father, now taxidermy
Hen: Missing, taken and eaten by a fox or a coyote
Cat: Found dead in the middle of the road, got run over over by a cart or a horse pulled carriage.
Duck: Killed by her father Christmas Dinner.
In Conclusion
So not all the animals were turned into taxidermy, but her father's love for being a taxidermist and her daughter noticing it started this made up world in Emily's head where the animals in real life she sees or knows their dead are created to be animals she can communicate with, and cope with their no longer existence alive on earth to save her the tears.
What I think about this theory that I came up with
Personally I don't think this theory is true in the Little Bear universe, but I decided to write it down (but not right away, I came up with few of the pieces awhile ago and put them together as I created this blog post). But it's fun to think about, even if it is dark : / :(
Thank you for reading this all the through (unless you didn't and scrolled down to the end and now reading this part), I hope you enjoy reading this, it took me awhile to write it but now its all done and published. Thanks again. Have a nice day, night, afternoon, etc. :)
