Mythology Sketches A Bird, Now Extinct By David Wagoner

Coexistence of humans and animals is a delicate balance which tends to be abused by humans. Humans tend to take control over animals which they deem worthy and try to immortalize them through text and image, which ironically ends often in the death of these animals, a concept which is explored by David Wagoner in the poem ‘The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct’. The poem discusses a man and a bird which he considers “his pride and burden” (Wagoner, 9) and the way this man tries to immortalize this ivory-billed woodpecker by painting a picture of it, studying it, and documenting observations of it which can exist forever in literature. I believe that this poem depicts a harsh reality which many people choose not to
believe, but if more people were to consider the fragility of any single animal or species we would be able to immortalize them by allowing them to thrive in their natural environment rather than immortalizing the idea of them once they’ve become extinct. Humans are typically thought of as superior to other species because of our “intelligence” in comparison to other species, but we are one of the only species’ in existence that will hunt other species’ to complete extinction.
This is not to say all humans are this way, as many humans try to conserve the natural world and all of the organisms in it; there are however, a select number who do such irreparable damage to the natural world by developing everywhere they can, that they run animals out of their natural habitat and force them into a new location that might not be optimal for resources for the animals. We see daily through people hunting animals to study them, “devoted masters of birds drawn from the life/ Must gather their flocks around them with a rifle/ and make them live forever inside books.” (Wagoner, 13-15). I agree with Wagoner that we, as a species, take the lives of other animals for granted for our own personal gains until they no longer have a fighting chance with life. This is crucial because as more species become extinct at a rapid rate, this could have permanent effects on food webs and food chains that include humans, but we haven’t taken the time to think that far in advance yet because even though we are very self centered beings, as a species we lack the ability to avoid making changes that have damaging long term consequences to the planet and life on
it. The human species as a whole tends to believe that certain qualities only exist in humans and no other organisms, even though these qualities such as compassion and empathy are beginning to be shown in other organisms. We tend to give animals harsh qualities which we find inhumane in order to justify cruel actions and harsh environmental conditions which would be ethically unsanctioned to place humans under to get something we find of value from them. We choose to ignore what we can hear is pain from a bird “while he tied one of its legs/ to a table leg, it started wailing again/ and went on wailing as if toward cypress grove/ while the artist drew and tinted on fine vellum” (Wagoner, 19-22) because it will be worth it when we get a painting out of its pain that will long surpass the bird’s lifespan. This mentality is slowly killing the planet because we are annihilating diversity around us with every building that goes up and every street that is created, with every animal that is hunted for show or game, with every disregard to what is actually occurring around us. The less diversity we have, the less we and any other species will be able to thrive. Many people have the concern of losing species to extinction due to natural causes, but we are the most unnatural cause for extinction and we are what is creating the most of these extinctions. Rather than immortalizing species through text and art, we should be giving them the chance to thrive in their natural environment and have a mutualistic relationship with them.