Fragile Lives
Reflections on extinction
9 min readJan 21, 2024
As I write this, I can hear a bird call. It’s an insistent, high-pitched ‘peep’, which could belong to any bird except that it comes from a thicket of weeds along the fence line. Not many birds would hide in such a tangle. This is where the snakes live.
It could belong to any bird, but close up the call reveals its weirdness. The ‘peep’ is accompanied by a deep…