Editor:
In response to news of the $4.5-million price put on his head earlier this month by President Biden’s “America the Beautiful” challenge grant (NCJ Daily, Dec.10), the Barred Owl signals his rage:
“When Moon unmasks your naked face, and gilds your gun with diamonds green, I mark your progress from afar. You stumble toward my roosting place, studying your tiny screen, tracking an artificial star.
“You killed my wife some dawns ago, fooled by your telescopic sight: She was a Northern Spotted Owl! You threw her feathers in the snow, no measurement of weight or height, bars or spots, murder most foul!
“Management stalks through the trees, plying the Endangered Species Act and shifting its dynamic core. We will be gone when, by degrees, the soil will sicken, parched and cracked: then, fire, desert, nothing more.
“I, Owl, now curse your species’ birth: no Permit comes from Mother Earth.”
Ellen Taylor, Petrolia
This article appears in ‘A Big Heart’.