Once flocks of passenger pigeons swept the skies in such masses sunflowers thought the dusk came early. They flew so close together you could shoot anywhere and get a few. They were the original fast food. One day they were all gone, but there are plenty of other birds out there. It is such a small thing that they are extinct, relatively speaking that is.
The Dodo is another lesson in extinction. First sighted around 1600 on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, the Dodo was extinct less than eighty years later. The eggs fell victim to the dogs, rats, and cats. Sailors loved to club the birds for sport. One day there weren’t any more Dodos to play with, but it was an ugly bird by all accounts and no one cared about it, relatively speaking so to speak.
Egypt used to be home to a species called the Egyptian Barbary Sheep, long forgotten and dissipated into the list of gone forever animals. Not everyone wears wool, and in the grand scheme of things, one sheep more or less is not a big deal, relatively speaking of course.
Queen of Sheba's Gazelle, Eastern Elk, Schomburgk's Deer, Big Thicket Hog-nosed Skunk, Falkland Island Wolf, all gone, all forgotten. This just means a few less deer to eat our shrubs, no more smelly rodents, and one less wolf. Relatively speaking, that’s another no brainer.
Caballo de Przewalski, Caballo salvaje, Cheval de Przewalski, Mongolian Wild Horse, Przewalski's Horse, Przewalski's Wild Horse, Takh, Quagga, Przewalski's Horse, Syrian Wild Ass, all weird names for funny looking horses and a donkey. Extinct before we had to learn to spell their names, nothing to make a fuss about relatively speaking.
They slaughtered 512 horses in Texas yesterday, one every two minutes. Must have been something wrong with them, why else would they have ended up in such a place? Every one knows there are plenty more horses around, relatively speaking.
Whose relative is speaking anyway?
© Carol M Chapman
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