To this day, the loss of the woolly rhinoceros pains me. Elasmotherium sibiricum went extinct some one and a half million years ago but I think we’d have gotten along famously. You can tell from reconstructions that he was a lofty and noble beast. All right-thinking men sympathize with predator over prey but there is something to be said for the power and ponderous majesty of a full grown herbivorous browser. There were saber-tooth tigers on the earth in those days but they would not have dared the two meter horn of the gouty and cantankerous giant rhinoceros. Even the modern bison commands a respect that cowardly, treacherous deer cannot.
I hold in my hands Extinct Animals: An Encyclopedia of Species that Have Disappeared during Human History. Obviously, the author also means to include prehistory. The beasts of the field and the birds of the air occupy a special place in the psyche of man, even in these urbanized latter days. Animals instinctively fascinate small children. To the ancestral hunter-gatherer, knowledge of the beasts meant life and death. As such, they are stamped indelibly upon our imagination. So, although this book in nonfiction, it merits consideration here at the Blind Prison of the Mind.
The author makes the following comment about the Carolina Parakeet:
The sad and needless extinction of this interesting bird mirrors the demise of the passenger pigeon, and ironically, both species met their end in a small cage in the same zoo, poignant reminders of human ignorance, greed, and disregard for the other species with which we share this planet.
This is certainly not the first time someone has written in this particular reproachful style. What wickedness. Would this man call himself ignorant or greedy? Would he say he has no regard for the other species of the planet? Of course not, but he hides behind the word “human” to suggest he magnanimously includes himself in his criticism when in reality he means no such thing. This is exactly the same as some bleeding-heart in Maine moaning that all whites all racist. He does not mean himself. This is spitting upon one’s enemies while while making a pious face and intoning platitudes of brotherhood.
The disciples of our modern morality have convinced themselves there’s something righteous in being a scold. Too bad the ducking stool went extinct.
There's wooly pigs, so... With enough determination, we could likely breed a herd up if there was enough desire.