After reading one of the latest posts from the "Querencia Blog" last night I couldn't get the moody dark, surreal image I imagined out of my head. Good thing is I might reproduce it for a painting or large scale print, hopefully. Stephens's post on his "possible new manuscript idea" surrounding the coming and going, "into extinction" of the Passenger Pigeon was both intriguing and sad, the little tidbit that may become part of an intro to the book just put me in a funk no matter how creative I felt. I was kicking myself as I went to bed for not knowing more about this sorrowful true story so today I started a bit of research both for the Art that I might create and to feed my spasm of need to know more, more or less so I could go off somewhere and grieve a wonderful thing I missed experiencing. The truth about the numbers and the questions of how and why add to my mourning the insult this little bird endured at the hands of progress. Sometimes I just hate to be associated with the rise of the Homo-sapien.
Passenger PigeonI hunt wild hogs with my dogs. Feral Hogs are more or less responsible for their own damnation but in the end they are just a wild animal that is out of hand in the land of men much like the Passenger Pigeon. At times I am torn about releasing some of my Man's Best Friends to do what they love more than life, find, chase and catch another animal for me and hold it there while I put a blade to it's heart. I'll be the first to admit that I am going soft in my latter days. I have at one time or another used different wild animals in confinement for the training of different dogs down through my 58 years here quail, ducks, coons, coyotes, and Feral Hogs. I have found and nursed some that were injured back to health, have relocated some that were the victims of loss of habitat and have even bought from trappers animals that I just thought needed to be set free. In the last several years I have had little pleasure with the training part till having accomplished my intended purpose released the animal back to the woods. I can't say I enjoy every aspect of Hog Hunting as I used to. I guess the euphoria of seeing dogs I have raised from pups," some that I sat and watched being born" go on to become some of the best at what they do is more than anything, "The Thing," that sustains my efforts. I can't say for sure but sometimes I feel that I am the instrument of the Hounds in some kind of weird symbiotic relationship where I am simply a means to their satisfaction. I know they hunt for themselves, for their own pleasure no matter how much I would like to think they hunt for me. As a good friend of mine said, "Dogs will brake your heart one way or the other even if they die of old age, hsj ."Another sad state of affairs that my age and my weathered mind has brought to my attention, so on the cuff of my melancholy and before I ramble on and completely miss the point I wanted to make, I will get back to it.
I have read where the weight of migrating PPs would brake the limbs from trees, I would have loved to have seen this sight in real life.
We are all going down the same road together whether we like it or not. For me I have run my course in too many directions to ever break the habit and stay in a steady direction that would accomplish something monumental, in other words I am not up to or capable of making much of a difference about the destination this world of ours will "dock at" someday except to write some mutterings on these unleavened pages that might strike a chord with some. And to those I say, if you are up to it, you must make telling young people things from your heart that will enlighten them about their future, if they know the past they will rightly navigate that future. I will tell my Grandbabys the story of the Passenger Pigeon, and the name of the last one that died on this earth, Martha. She spent her entire life in a zoo, would never mate to any of the remaining males so with her sad passing something was taken from me, you and my Grandbabys. She died at 1 P.M. on September 1, 1914 at the age of 29. You must tell them, the children, the old stories that you know or have heard that puts a little food on the plate for their souls, they are starving for the most part having no idea what was and what will be. Tell them the stories of your family, the stories they told you, the personal stuff. Tell them stories you know that you have discovered, the ones that fed your soul.
I remember words told to me by many as I made barefoot tracks in the dirt, these things are what made me what I am today. You know we learn most of what is stored in our brain by the age of 5 or six they say but I say, more importantly we grow and plant in our spirit and soul what we are and what we can be by that age. Afterwards we begin that downward motion from all the false, fake stimuli slapped into our little faces, we become conditioned to becoming what ever the latest trend flows from the brains of stupid people and this world has more than enough of those folks!
Our world needs people with a soul, if you don't learn that you have a soul at a young age and how to take care of it you are lost forever. And the way kids are being raised these days their souls are the last thing their parents are interested in. If we continue to birth and raise children that have malnourished souls well, we old folks are gonna pass like the Passenger Pigeon. They will eventually put us in zoos like pigeons cause we have become an unnecessary problem, she died in her zoo at 1 P.M. on September 1, 1914 at the age of 29 the very last one on earth!
Mounted Passenger Pigeons were available at auction somewhere
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
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