[chessplayer]

Homo Sapiens answer = "of course not. that would require intelligence."

[353FMG]

Nothing special.

Tasted like chicken.

[chessplayer]

“We need to imagine Martha asking us, ‘Have you learned anything from my passing?’”

---

Homo Sapiens answer = “of course not. that would require intelligence.”

[Rembrandt]

This sounds a lot like the Islamist vision for the Israeli people, Chrisitian people, Catholic people, Asian people, etc., i.e., anyone who isn’t exactly like them.

[yarddog]

Quite a few years ago I read a great detective story on the passenger pigeon.

I don’t remember much but after one blizzard they discovered the passenger pigeons had been caught in it and there were literally millions of them dead in the ice/snow.

[Flycatcher]

Lol!

Read the comments at the end of the article. One guy makes an innocuous joke about not crying over a dead pigeon, and three "compassionate" environuts go ballistic. One even calls him a cold-blooded psychopath.

Leftists are so endearing.

[fso301]

I never really bought into the line that the passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction any more than I believe logging wiped out the American chestnuts.

[dfwgator]

[Blood of Tyrants]

This happened before limits were placed on hunting. Hunters would use put guns, very large bore shotguns, to shoot hundreds at a time.

[SIDENET]

the last of a species once the most plentiful on the planet.

Now if they can just do the same to those damn starlings.

[SpaceBar]

They should search various preserved specimens for some viable DNA and clone them back into existence.

[Vendome]

We need to imagine Martha asking us, ‘Have you learned anything from my passing?’”

“Uh, yeah! Dinosaurs had more meat and made better ribs!” I snidely responded “And! And! You were too much work to feed a growing family.

Good Riddance!”.

[Peter W. Kessler]

Allow me to be the first:

Bush’s fault.

[MuttTheHoople]

Do we really want to bring them back? That could mean Payback.

[holyscroller]

Baloney! My grandfather raised carrier pigeons until after 1933. My grandfather owned the first typewriter store in Philadelphia, and he had a lot of pigeons. He would write a note when he was leaving the store and ready to take the train home, and Grandma would know when he would be home because the pigeon would get there in no time and warn her which train he would be on.

When I was young about 8 or 9 years old, I used to go in to Philly to the Philadelphia Bulletin office, and they (the newspaper) were still using carrier pigeons. Even in the dead of winter, they kept a window open in the "Heigh-De-Ho" office so the pigeons could fly in.

I went to Philly alone on the Reading Railroad (it was safe in those days) I SAW those carrier pigeons with my own eyes. People sent messages via little tubes that were attached to the pigeon's legs. The sender would write the message, fold up the paper very small and put it in the tube on the pigeon's leg.

Anyway, my point is, carrier pigeons did not die out at the turn of the century because my grandfather raised them, and I saw them in use up to at least 1942.

[P-Marlowe]

That’s one species if flying rat that was eliminated. It gives me hope that the species that keeps crawling around on my chimney and crapping on my sidewalk will someday go extinct as well.

The only good pigeon is a dead pigeon.

[BenLurkin]

And even to this day people are saying. “Gee, I sure wish I had a carrier pigeon.”

Not.

[Organic Panic]

What have I learned from Martha? The planet still orbits the sun. The sky is still blue. Life goes on. We have managed to live without Tasmanian Tigers, dodos, and carrier pigeons. I am not saying we should go out killing everything but the world did not stop spinning losing these animals. Now these endangered animals are literally going to imprison and starve us. Delta smelt anyone?

[Colorado Doug]

Global warming’s first victim. If only there had been a carbon tax a hundred years ago, Martha would still be alive.

[clearcarbon]

Fortunately for the pigeons they didn't have to contend with green power windmills and Mojave desert solar power plants.

There's probably a few passenger aircraft pilots that don't shed too tears for their absence.

[Pollster1]

In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens a few miles beyond Hardensburgh, I observed the pigeons flying from north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I travelled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose . . . .

Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh fiftyfive miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession . . . . It may not, perhaps, be out of place to attempt an estimate of the number of Pigeons contained in one of those mighty flocks . . . Let us take a column of one mile in breadth, which is far below the average size, and suppose it passing over us without interruption for three hours, at the rate mentioned above of one mile in the minute. This will give us a parallelogram of 180 miles by 1, covering 180 square miles. Allowing two pigeons to the square yard, we have one billion, one hundred and fifteen millions, one hundred and thirty-six thousand pigeons in one flock.

- John James Audubon

Sounds impressive.