Animal SOS Animal. Octavio Pineda
looked like a living tank – an impenetrable fortress –
equipped not only with armor,
but with a horn-shaped head,
a wonder of self-defense.
But, like Achilles, we all have our heel.
And mine was, precisely, that portentous shaft
that became the target of greed,
of absurd superstition.
In spite of my tremendous muscles,
in many pictures I show myself crying
because since then I already knew
I would be one of the first species to go extinct.
They say the best defense is a good offense,
but in my serenity of peaceful monk I never believed it.
Now it's too late to regret it.
The whale
It is of little use to be the largest of all the species
that have lived on Earth:
The bigger you come, the harder you fall,
and my size made me the most vulnerable.
In the first journeys at sea,
the mere sighting of my mass used to frighten seamen,
keeping them at bay; and when they were back at their ports,
they used to exaggerate my size,
describing me as a monster,
as the guardian of unknown waters.
But very soon the planet’s worst predator
overcame the distances of this big water sphere
and also their own fears to then see me
as an endless source of meat, fat and bones
and put me on the verge of extinction.
Fortunately, a sensible ban helped us recover in number.
However, just as David defeated Goliath,
my worst enemy
is now entering me as poison in the stomach.
And these beards that had allowed me to eat well for generations
and been so effective in filtering krill from water
now are unable to distinguish those little crustaceans
from the plastics that flood the oceans.
The elephant
All that one has learned in the past is useless
when the present is so uncertain;
and that of my entire species is not promising.
In my role of matriarch,
and thanks to my prodigious memory,
I have done my best to lead my herd
to geographies of water and food,
helping them avoid terrible beasts.
But the worst among them knows how to camouflage
and attacks from a distance, from a very long distance,
to put a bullet in our head.
We can do nothing.
In the face of treachery, the enormous force
that allows us to uproot trees is ineffective,
as well as closing ranks to protect ourselves as a group.
And all because of these ivory tusks,
which in theory are for our defense
but now I curse, for they have been our ruin.
If you want them so much to decorate your frivolous showcases
or make chess games,
I give them to you, but please don’t kill unnecessarily all of us.
The memory of the world, of the most antique,
that of mammoths and mastodons,
also lives on in me.
The pangolin
With slight shape variations,
I had managed to survive
for millions of years.
Animal artichoke,
I’m the last living genus of the Manidae.
I have always felt close
to armadillos, sloths and anteaters,
whose ancestors date back to armored glyptodonts
or the giant sloth, also called the Megatherium,
but taxonomists say
I followed a different evolutionary branch.
To defend myself, I roll into a ball, like a woodlouse:
in wise Nature, everything is interconnected,
no matter if you are a mammal or an insect.
Whatever my origin, my future is quite precarious,
and like for many other species
my ruin has been
the ignorance or superstition of mankind,
which has given my scales as frivolous uses
as making cowboy boots
or ascribing medicinal benefits to them,
when they actually are made of simple keratin
just like human nails or hair.
The tiger
Stripes are not an exclusive design of my species.
Animals as varied
as laughing zebras or shy okapis
also have them.
They had proven to be an effective contrivance of Nature
for camouflaging in the environment,
simulating lights alternated with shadows,
like sunbeams passing through tree branches ...
Until mankind arrived, destroying everything.
They have been finishing me off little by little;
not really because they see me as a direct threat,
since I usually avoid them and am increasingly confined
in remnants of jungle, unless I starve to death
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