Sad birdposting: Audio of the very last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird before extinction singing a song for a mate who will never show up.
I also recently learned this fact about the audio that really got to me. After the researchers recorded this, they played it back, then he excitedly flew over, thinking he just heard another ʻōʻō bird.
I'm having a hard time describing how I feel about the song because it's makes me feel so sad and angry all the same. The song itself can mean so many different emotions and invoke so many thoughts to so many different people, and yet the context surrounding it and why you're hearing it this way manages to centralize those emotions to one point. We, as humans, collectively caused our emotions to burst by destroying this innocent creature's existence.
I feel so angry that the people beyond my time and most definitely beyond my control have destroyed this song. I want to lash out and scar the perpetrators for eternity and give them a mark to remember what they did but it's pointless. I have seen wondrous beauty claw, scratch, kick, scream and bite its way out of the ashes of our destruction and I see no difference here. Three million people heard this song of the ancient world and there are many more that felt compelled to express themselves after hearing it, like myself. I encourage people, if they feel how I feel, to take a broad look at just how many people wrote their quick thoughts, composed their music, or even wrote their books based off hearing a single sound or reading a simple string of words. There is going to be someone out there that makes a beautiful piece of art that we'll never know about thanks to this song.
The occurrence that I described happens every single day, whether we want it to or not. People have always created something from the ashes of nothingness. They created hope. This bird, like so much that existed before us, will carry on in so many people's memories that it's hard to deny that it's truly extinct. We remember.
This will happen to 85% of species if habitat destruction is not stopped and we don't transition to a wild half earth system. Save the biosphere and the planet's ecological heritage.
No my new truck matters more than global south climate victims. I also need yo eat medium rare steak 3 times an hour or endless baby tears will spill forth from my little thumb head. Considered that yet, eco freak?