I'm Happy to Have Fiction in the Current Issue of Clavmag

I love the way this magazine is opening a new frontier of fiction and other genres, hybrid genres, informed by LGBTQIA inventiveness.

I also love their name and logo. Visit the magazine to read about why the clavicle was chosen as the objective correlative. It's rather fascinating.

Thanks much to editors Freya and Gabrielle for including my short story. 

The De-Extinction Controversy and the Passenger Pigeon Redivivus

     I watched this little documentary about the impending de-extinction of the passenger pigeon. I found it interesting and sad.



     I thought it was illuminating when the proponent of de-extinction was asked why he would want to bring back such an "annoying" creature. This attitude is doubtless part of the answer as to why the species went extinct. It's not the entire answer, however. Farmers did lose their livelihoods when the birds descended en masse on crops. It wasn't so much that the species was seen as an agricultural nuisance. Most accounts say that for the size of the population the impact on agriculture was rather small. Passenger pigeons liked to feed on mast, the fruit of forest trees, like acorns, hickory nuts, beech nuts and the like. The deforestation that killed its habitat within its chosen range (Great Lakes to east coast) is a large part of the explanation of the extinction. But the fact that it was easily acquired prey and became a food staple for some populations (in the age of firearms) is the predominant reason this bird no longer exists.

   A really readworthy essay from Audubon Magazine explains how the telegraph and the locomotive contributed to the extinction of the passenger pigeon.

     Here's a simulation of the experience of being under a mega-flock of passenger pigeons. Admit it: you live for just that, don't you?



     The passenger pigeon genome was sequenced in 2012 and this led to speculation that the bird's origin was in the Neotropical Region of the New World (Central and South America). So if the passenger pigeon were to turn up again as a lazarus species, might it be down there? This seems unlikely since the bird doesn't tend to live in isolated pockets. They were a communal species and even helped rear each other's young. So these evolutionary adaptations would probably mean any populations would probably swell to great numbers rather than bottleneck. So most likely it really is "gone gone." Not just "maybe gone." Unless a hidden population of the remaining members of the species underwent a mutation which made them relative isolationists. And how likely is that?

     But attempts are underway to revive the passenger pigeon by using its closest living relative, the western Band-tailed pigeon as an alma mater. In silico, in vitro, in situ: here is the great comeback plan..

      A little scraping from the toe pad of a taxidermied specimen and they were off running. Will we get a true 100% brand-new passenger pigeon? Probably not. Will this be something more like FrankenPigeon? As Morrissey sang, Well, I wonder. The projected realization date for this project is nebulously defined as "decades away."

     Here is Ben Novak again, the biggest proponent of the passenger pigeon's de-extinction, in the inevitable TedTalk.



     Here's an English band perhaps singing presciently about the passenger pigeon and others to return. I never knew why Wire added that "i" to "in vitro." For sound, I suppose. What you gonna do when you have that extra syllable floating in a melody?



     Here is a video featuring Martha, the last of her kind.



     Think how many taxidermied specimens of this lost species must  be hiding in attics of old houses. It's sort of statistically certain since there were billions shot up until 1900 and taxidermy was widely practiced in that period.

     I wondered how often these taxidermied passenger pigeons came up for auction. The sad element of "price" just underscores the worst side of humanity, but here is a link to the debate as to the worth of a newly-introduced specimen in the extinct species marketplace (sad phrase!) There are two links there, and the bottom one includes an interesting and heated discussion about whether or not the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, a great thing, forbids the sale of taxidermied passenger pigeons. The answer turns out to be "no" because the last bird went extinct in 1914 and the species is not named in the Act, which was introduced four years later.  If de-extinction becomes a regular feature of the scientific landscape in the future, rarer specimens of extinct animals might be worth a cruel fortune. One would hope by that point that new legislation would have mandated protection of extinct genetic repositories.

     Also, I learned from that last discussion that possession of a bird's nest (any nest) is a crime in America. Presumably, even if you collect an abandoned one from branches or pick a fallen, empty one off the ground. Who knew. So you could get busted for pot and a bird's nest at the same time. Maybe you could plead out on the pot and do the time for the nest.

     What did the passenger pigeon sound like? Well, here is a helpful document.  And here is the sad truth: "There are no known recordings of passenger pigeons." There were billions of them, but no one thought to record them as they disappeared. Granted, it was a new technology. But we have Walt Whiman's voice. Just not the passenger pigeon. No one cared about you, darlin'. You were so "all or nothing."