Moa Less, More or Less
By ice rivers
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If you go deep into the Hobbitland now known as New Zealand and listen carefully, you might hear the deep resonant howl from the wildly elongated trachea of Big Bird being torn to pieces by a gigantic eagle. The eagle, top predator of his pre-historic realm, has once again slammed into a retreating Big Bird with the force of a block of concrete falling from an eight story building if they had either concrete blocks or eight story buildings back then which of course they didn’t which was good for everybody.
This was going on for 60 million years and everybody loved it except for on occasion the gigantic big bird who had about as much fun as a turkey on Thanksgiving but hey, in the natural order, that’s the way things go.
So everything was going fine until Gambar and his Polynesian pals showed up in 1300 and decided that Big Birds were good to eat. Over the course of the next 400 years, Gambar and the gang along with the giant eagles drove the Big Birds, known as the moa, into extinction.
Turned out that this was a bad idea for the giant eagles as well. Every once in awhile they would attack a Polynesian for shits and giggles. That giant eagle would become part of NewZealand legend until it too became prey of the pissed off Polynesians,
It wasn’t the Polynesians that drove the giant eagles into extinction. The absence of Big Bird for dinner led directly to the starvation and extinction of the giant Eagle.
Of course this ongoing extinction of birds is continuing today which is apparently fine with everybody until it isn’t when it might be too late.
But that’s not gonna happen tomorrow, so let’s love the one we’re with while we can because we too are aware of the catastrophic non-linearity of potential. Some of us will realize our potential and thrive until catastrophe sets us back a spell. Others of us, will never come close to reaching our potential which will disappear into the heavens and be gathered by angels for re-distribution/de-extinction.
The moa were truly wingless birds and were fifteen times the size of the eagles that ripped them apart and twice the size of the Polynesians who feasted upon them. Size isn’t everything but it worked well for Wilt Chamberlain.
So as the moa attempted to achieve the record for quickest extinction it faced a stiff challenge from another, much smaller bird….the beloved DoDo bird.
The race between yoa and dodo to extinction is too close to call so scientists have come up with a remedy. Fossill remains have provided geneticists with enough DNA to begin the formalization of the process that might enable de-extinction of both birds and the one who comes back first will be declared the loser in the race to extinction derby.
The way we are proceeding currently, investigations into the probability of de-extinction are liable to increase in the next thirty years when currently unborn children will be watching re-runs of Sesame Street. They will see Big Bird and his Do Do friends in teevee time and then go to the zoo and see them in real time along with the giant eagles three cages over.
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