"On a Monument to the Pigeon"

The way that Aldo Leopold uses poetic imagery and style of writing is effective. It not only personifies the pigeon, but compares it to nature in an eye catching manner. He says things such as, “The pigeon was no mere bird, he was a biological storm”, which bring the bird to life. Normally, we don’t think of animals as unique creatures in a sense of their attributes that don’t deal with reproduction or natural processes. We think of them as “just a bird” or “just a dog”, not as the “lighting that played between two biotic poles of intolerable intensity”. I also liked that Leopold said that “we who erect this monument are performing a dangerous act” because it brings up the point that we are all connected to the way that animals thrive or die. We may think we have no stakes in this pigeon’s extinction but the truth is that we all do. It is important to mourn these birds and to take their extinction seriously because if we don’t history is doomed to repeat itself. Each creature on this planet plays a role in the way that nature functions and the way that we live, a butterfly effect in a way. Even though we have these birds history and appearance in books, that is nothing like what it would be like if they were still around today. We are not able to learn more from them, we are not able to see how they interact with the world around them, because they are gone for good. So, one final thought that I have is what lengths would it take for more people to take extinction seriously?