To Martha, The Last Passenger Pigeon

“We kill them by the barrel. We kill them by the carload. We kill them all.”

        --Smithsonian film about the extinction of the passenger pigeon in 1914, the same year World War I started. The last known pigeon was Martha, who lived and died in the Cincinnati Zoo. They were once the most common bird in the US and probably the world.  

1914. World War I was just beginning and we had no idea yet that the rivers will turn red with the blood of young soldiers. Very young soldiers. They left for shores they could not imagine, with fresh guns and baby faces. Dreams fall so easily over their shoulders, small weight. We will literally grind them into the ground for years. They had names. Their mothers would mention them at dinners. We tore their arms and legs off while their younger brothers played in city lot. We didn’t know, in 1914, our limits. We thought we did.

"Martha," on display in the newly opened Bird Hall, c. 1956.
Image from Smithsonian Institution Archives

And we were wrong.

“...by the barrel…”

So many of them, it’s impossible to imagine they could all die. Their passing by sounded like thunder and would take hours. A swam, a sea, a storm of birds. The sky darkens as the birds circle up. Up and over.

For the taking. We picked them, shot them, strangled them, poisoned them, grabbed them, netted them, and sometimes, we just reached up and wrapped a hand around one and pulled it to the ground.

It was so easy. It was too easy.

“...by the carload…”

Pack the bodies in and ship them. One on top of the other. A train. The rhythm of the train. 

A bird. A man.

Birds.

Men.

“We kill them all.”

I am sick with being surprised, almost daily, at our capacity to kill. I am sick with hearing that a toddler shot his brother, that a cop shot a kid, that a guy walked into a theater or a neighborhood or shopping center and opened fire. I am sick with sending kids to war and calling them brave and heros when they don’t come back. I am sick with tearing their bodies apart.

I am sick of sending kids to school where they get shot.

We see a bird. We see a person. We aim. We shoot.

“We kill them all.”

And then we take the very last bird, pack it in ice and preserve it forever. The bird is extinct, but we have the last one in a museum. A reminder. That nothing lasts. We can kill off even the most abundant.

Martha, the war began. You died. And we cannot seem to grasp what extinction means. A species? A life? I love you for the truth that at each point, there is no difference.