Mythology Sketches A Bird, Now Extinct By David Wagoner

Coexistence of humans and animals is a delicate balance which tends to be abused by humans. Humans tend to take control over animals which they deem worthy and try to immortalize them through text and image, which ironically ends often in the death of these animals, a concept which is explored by David Wagoner in the poem ‘The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct’. The poem discusses a man and a bird which he considers “his pride and burden” (Wagoner, 9) and the way this man tries to immortalize this ivory-billed woodpecker by painting a picture of it, studying it, and documenting observations of it which can exist forever in literature. I believe that this poem depicts a harsh reality which many people choose not to
This is not to say all humans are this way, as many humans try to conserve the natural world and all of the organisms in it; there are however, a select number who do such irreparable damage to the natural world by developing everywhere they can, that they run animals out of their natural habitat and force them into a new location that might not be optimal for resources for the animals. We see daily through people hunting animals to study them, “devoted masters of birds drawn from the life/ Must gather their flocks around them with a rifle/ and make them live forever inside books.” (Wagoner, 13-15). I agree with Wagoner that we, as a species, take the lives of other animals for granted for our own personal gains until they no longer have a fighting chance with life. This is crucial because as more species become extinct at a rapid rate, this could have permanent effects on food webs and food chains that include humans, but we haven’t taken the time to think that far in advance yet because even though we are very self centered beings, as a species we lack the ability to avoid making changes that have damaging long term consequences to the planet and life on