N. S. Streets: The Last Dodo, Kartoniert / Broschiert

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Before the maps were drawn and the ships were built and the hunger of men spread across the waters like a plague, there was an island. It had no name. It simply was-a green jewel in the Indian Ocean, born of fire and then forgotten by it, left to grow wild and strange and whole. And in this garden without a gardener, there lived a bird. She was plump and grey, with wings that had forgotten how to fly and eyes that held no fear, for she had never learned what fear was for. She had no enemies because the island had never made any. She was not a fool. She was complete. She was what a creature becomes when it is allowed to evolve in peace for ten million years. Then the ships came. The men called her dodo-fool, sluggard. They laughed at her as they killed her. They killed more than they could eat, because that is the way of men when they discover abundance. They brought pigs that ate her eggs and rats that devoured her young. And year by year, the silence grew deeper. THE LAST DODO is a dark fairy tale about extinction. About a creature who trusted a world that had never given her reason to be afraid. About the casual cruelty of hunger. About the forgetting that follows the killing. It is a eulogy for the dodo-and for the great auk, the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian tiger, and all the countless unnamed who followed her into that final silence. *I was not stupid. I was trusting.* *I was here. I was whole. I was enough.* *And then I was nothing.* *And you did this.* May we learn. May we remember. May we, for once, be wise enough to stop.