The following is a true story.

Mommy, what's venison?

As my kids and I left the theater after watching Brother Bear last year, I noticed two men walking along in front of us. Actually it would have been impossible not to notice them. One topped six and a half feet, probably tipped the scales at a sturdy 300 lbs. and, except for the regionally mandated beer gut, looked to be 99% muscle. The other guy probably called him either "Shorty" or "Slim". Yeah, in the land of cheese and brats, we grow our men XXXXXL. Same as our mosquitos. To complete the ensemble, the duo were wearing work-boots, plaid, blaze orange, denim and of course the obligatory baseball caps featuring their favorite farm implement shopping locations.

Anyway, Huge asked Huger if he'd liked the movie and the answer was, "Yeah. Yeah... but y'know..." and he choked up.

Nodding in sympathy, his friend clapped him on the shoulder in a supportive though strictly masculine sort of way and said, "I know, man. I know." Then he cursed under his breath with a beyond PG-13 word and muttered, "Disney."

Orphans often create imaginary friends.

Disney indeed.

All things considered, Brother Bear isn't particularly memorable to my mind. Standard animated flick with a moral lesson hiding behind ancestors of the Country Bear Jamboree and the light repartee of two Canadian accented moose eh? (Personally I think this is absolutely normal for writers who probably smoke suspiciously aromatic hookahs and play cards with the denizens of Wonderland.) The only reason I went to see it was that the movie was slightly less torturous than enduring the accusing eyes of my youngest.

But true to form, Disney took the opportunity to grab people's hearts and wring 'em out really good by killing off a baby bear's mom and the "hero's" adored older brother. It was carnage! Carnage I tell you!

Now just to take a brief saunter through left field, let me admit that my longterm co-writer and I have a habit of trading suggestions for creatively torturing our own fictional characters just to punch up the plot a little bit. I've even killed off one or two literarily personified figments of my imagination for nothing more noble than dramatic effect. I've gotten hate mail for it actually, so I know it worked.

Are you sure you can't wait to be king???

But I don't actually write with children as my projected audience.

Disney does, and as often as not, they're killing off immediate family members as if they were mere gophers in the garden of life. In fact, there should be a Surgeon General's warning stating that sharing DNA with animated Disney youngsters can be hazardous to your health. I mean, lets look at a partial list of those who have been sacrificed at the alter of da big Mouse:

• The Lion King - Dad

• Bambi - Mom

• Lilo and Stitch - Mom and Dad before the movie even started!

• Brother Bear - One character's mother, another character's brother.

• Finding Nemo - Mom and a few hundred siblings.

• Beauty and the Beast - Where was Belle's mom?

• Pocahontas – Ditto!

• The Little Mermaid – That makes three MIA mommies!

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Quasimodo's mother murdered on screen, thank you very much.

Meercat or contract killer? You be the judge.

May they rest in peace.

It doesn't stop there. Even dating, or wanting to date these Typhoid Mickeys can be hazardous to your health. Beauty and the Beast (boyfriend stabbed), Pocahontas (two boyfriends shot), and of course in Hunchback of Notre Dame we saw both an embedded arrow and a burning at the stake. Love might be in the air, but so are several other lethal projectiles. And you think gangster movies are violent?

Man, someone has serious issues at the Magic Kingdom. Totally Freudian.

I mean really, is all this necessary? Honestly?

Sure, I've heard the argument that there's value in introducing children to potential "real life" hardships by exposing them to fictional ones, but respectfully I have to disagree in the same way that I disagree with letting a toddler touch a hot stove as a discouragement against future accidents. You can't tell me that a youngster is going to react better to losing a parent because Bambi's mother bought the farm first. And if they did, is that honestly a good thing? I'll admit that these movies might be useful for opening a dialogue about mortality, but personally I'd just as soon not have an animated hunting season statistic be the catalyst for the conversation. That's just me, but I never saw any point in traumatizing my children before real life came along and did the deed. Forewarned might be forearmed, but it can also cause bedwetting. Ignorance, on the other hand, is sweet bliss.

Okay, okay, I know that I'm probably blowing that line of reasoning out of proportion. I mean, The Lion King couldn't have happened if Mufasa hadn't gotten a one way ticket to the big savannah in the sky. Beauty wouldn't have run across the Beast if Maurice's wife had been around to read the map when he got lost. (Left turn at Alburquerque!) I know all this. I do. I understand. Yes indeed.

The duck and his unsuspecting prey.

But that doesn't make me feel any better because I honestly don't believe that the good people at Chez Goofy write this stuff into the movies with any intention of public service or early childhood education. This ain't Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers is a long way from Hakuna Matata. Call me an aging fusspot, but a kid's life is hard enough without Disney induced nightmares. Having systematically ripped at the core of any reasonable child's most primal fear (loss of a parent), what's left to traumatize the little tykes with? All right, aside from the kidnapping and plotted mass murder of a hundred and one adorably spotted puppies. But I digress. The bottom line is that I'm a mom and I can't help but resent the willful annihilation of my peers. Even the ones with fur or fins.

So really. Come on Disney. Why do you hate your mother?