Because of the Endangered Species Act, the Gould's wild turkey, the largest of the five subspecies of the bird in North America, won't be on our dinner plates this Thanksgiving. I'm happy for the bird and I wish him and his flock many happy survivals from bushwhackers' shotgun pellets.
I wonder, though, how the Gould's wild turkey and more than 1,200 other species managed to get on the endangered species list and not me. I'm not happy that my immediate descendants and maybe everyone else on earth could become extinct before humankind ever smartens up. I hereby petition the government to put me on that list. Threats of annihilation are taken fairly seriously there, except by the odd Bushwhacker in the White House.
Granted, I'm not as noble a creature as the Bald Eagle, Stellar Sea Lion, or San Bernardino Kangaroo Rat. But I'm darn sure my species deserves to live as much as others on the list, such as the Mississippi Kite, Kentucky Crawfish, and Indiana Bat. Call me the Black-and-Blue Michigander, an especially endangered subspecies known as homo-autogargantus.
Under the Act's protection, I would expect vigorous intervention on my behalf from the enforcer of the Act, the new U.S. Fish, Wildlife, and People Service.
To fulfill its mandate, this Service would have to determine the date at which the world's rapidly dwindling number of forests and trees will no longer be able to absorb the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere from consumer and industrial sources. The Service would then have full authority to act quickly to stop this deadly progression.
As a first step, the Service would initiate a corporate intervention program. This program would hire psychotherapists to conduct spot checks of corporate executives, requiring mandatory on-the-spot therapy to root out their emotional addiction to self-sabotaging behaviors. That's the addiction that brought down the Detroit Gassy Roadrunner and the Wall Street Sewer Rat.
According to the first principle of self-sabotage, we are fated to repeat our mistakes if we don't learn from the past. We haven't learned from the past because we don't honestly examine in the present our $motives, $impulses, $desires, $cravings, and $fetishes. Live by the dollar, become extinct by the dollar.
The world is spinning in a hurricane of self-sabotage. Maybe the shock of being listed as an endangered species will inspire us to evolve more quickly. Gratitude and thanks for all the blessings that money can't buy can then wash over the terrorist, the imperialist, the exploiter, and the little I at the center of the storm.
