The Way of the Dodo

The dodo bird is the icon of extinction, the holy mother of obsolete species.

The dodo: three feet tall, unable to fly.  Man finds it on the island of Mauritius.  This fool bird that has no fear of humans.  Easier prey cannot be imagined.

Apparently the meat didn't even taste that good.   But who cares?  It was easy to catch, and if humans weren't chasing it down, it was the dogs and the pigs and the cats and the rats that the humans brought with them.

It's extinction through mindlessness.

The last confirmed sighting was in 1662.  Less than a century later, the dodo had gained a mythical status, people uncertain whether it had ever truly existed, or was just a hoax like the jackalope or the Scottish haggis.

Imagine: less than a century for something that was real to be commonly viewed as folklore.

Will that be the fate of things dying out now?  One hundred years hence will people sit around and talk of typewriters and telegrams as though they were a fictional invention, a whimsy of some new wave (circa 2107) author?  I wonder.

But perhaps, that is the function of The Obselidia. 

To say a holy yes to all that used to be.  To say to all: this did exist, this was real.  And this is how it was...