The last known whooping crane nest in the United States was found in Iowa by onithologist and egg collector J.W. Preston. He wrote, "When I approached the nest, the bird, which had walked some distance away, came running back ... wings and tail spread drooping, with head and shoulders brought level with the water; then it began picking up bunches of moss and sticks which it threw down in a defiant way; then, with pitiable mien, it spread itself upon the water and begged me to leave its treasure, which, in a heartless manner, I did not do."
(from "When Elephants Weep" by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson)

What happened to you, humans? Why are you so far removed from nature that you must conquer or kill or adapt it all to your means? What is so important that you cannot feel for the non-human animals you share this planet with, nor even for the planet itself, which is your life, your sustainer? With a crippled planet, we will not survive, and you think nothing is wrong. You take and you take, and you ignore the warnings, the symptoms of sickness all around you, the state of disease your greed and wants have caused, and what will it take before you realize what is happening, what you are allowing to happen?
How many extinctions and superstorms and screaming scientists does it take? Does it have to be something you see firsthand? Does it need to happen to you personally before you believe what many reliable studies, and what common sense, is telling us?
We need to learn from our mistakes. Resource exhaustion is a serious threat: Easter Island, the Greenland Norse, the fertile crescent, certain areas of west Africa, these things are recorded--if not taught--history, and we forget them. We ignore. And if we do not learn, if we do not adapt, if we refuse to evolve, we will die along with the rest, and we will have earned it.

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character info: Brennan, polar bear
He's kind of a pirate, travels by ship because his home melted because climate change, doho. the rest is still rusty, but really, this happened because of Jimmy Buffett's "a pirate looks at 40" and Billy Joel's "the downeaster 'alexa'" and I have too much benadryl in my head to think about it any more, okay.