“On a Monument to the Pigeon”

In Aldo Leopold’s article “On a Monument to the Pigeon”, he writes about the now extinct passenger pigeon as well as its relation to humanity.  Leopold uses a lot of personification in his article such as when he mentions that “only the oldest oaks will remember” as well as “only the hills will know.”  The reason these personifications were made was to convey that the passenger pigeon is gone and will not be seen again.  It does this by listing what will be around the longest.  The shortest living, the humans, who saw them before they went extinct will die first and with them, the memories of the bird.  It moves along to trees and then finally hills which will be around the longest and therefore eventually be the only ones left with the “memory” of this bird lost to the ages. 

Leopold then moves on to discuss our real reasons for erecting the statue of the passenger pigeon.  He states that our reasoning for making the statue was to, at least in part, push the blame away from ourselves, as the human race, as the ones who caused the extinction of the pigeon.  This would be in the sense that we created a statue for it, therefore we cared for it, therefore it shouldn’t or can’t have been our fault.  I feel this is accusatory and not necessarily always true as I never thought of it that way.  I always thought of it as a way of honoring the existence of the animal.  I do, however, think he is right in implying that we do not own up to this though, so I cannot say he is completely wrong. 

Leopold also mentions that the only pigeon left is the statue and it will remain in its place, unable to fly.  It then goes through a series of visually stimulating words that represent the passage of time throughout the years as the statue remains flightless.  This all indicates that Leopold is really sad about the loss of the passenger pigeon.  It is also shown that he was not only sad but passionate about the pigeon when he mentions how they were a “biological storm” and vividly describes the pigeon’s life in an extravagant way.  In the end, Leopold uses the pigeon’s way of life to metaphor how humans should be.