"On a Monument to the Pigeon, by Aldo Leopold"

While reading this article I kept asking my self the same question after each paragraph, which was what if? What if we hadn't used passenger pigeons as a form of communication, what if the pigeons weren't killed off? Leopold invoked these type of questions because he made the article personal by constantly using the word we. I enjoyed how Leopold almost humanized the pigeons and made it feel like everyone should care that they are gone. It wasn't that Leopold tried to make the reader feel guilty; I believe he just wanted his audience to be aware about how and why the passenger pigeons became extinct. The main point was not to lay blame it was to show how the human race has taken advantage of their ability at the top of the food chain. In the end of the article it isn't about the blame, it is about honoring the passenger pigeons through this monument. 

The imagery that Leopold uses is what really makes the article effective. Through descriptive sentences and wording Leopold turns the article into something almost poetic. Like most poetry it takes a few times reading it over to fully grasp what he was trying to say. Because a lot of paragraphs had underlying meaning sometime it was hard to understand what the author was really trying to say. Even though I had to read some parts over again I realized that most of the article was about the greed humans have. Like Leopold said humans have been killing off species for decades without any remorse or regret for their actions. That is why Leopold wrote this article about the monument because he wants people to know that even though it may be too late for some animals, humans are finally realizing what their actions may cost other species.