The first time I saw them I thought
they were ghosts, the ocean’s ghosts lost at land. I was in a Target parking lot when I first
set eyes on them – a flock of lily-white seas gulls in Durham, NC – 2+ hours
from the nearest ocean. They made this
parking lot their home sea. The ebb and
flow of customer and car traffic had become their new tide, and the
streetlights their forever twilight – replacing the subtle star lights of
liberated waters. I was curious of their
presence, confused by their being. Why here, and why of all places,
Target? I suppose it could have just as
well been a Wal-Mart or a mall parking lot – any parking lot really that gave
the appearance of empty vastness, except on one Black Friday of every
year. Surely these sea gulls had gotten
lost. Maybe they had been carried on the
winds of Hurricane Fran; maybe they arrived via Target trailer truck. Whatever the reason, these sea gulls were
real, no ghosts of the sea, no mind mirages from a late night trip to Target.
These sea gulls were lost sea spirits in a sea-less, nature-less world. These sea gulls would have baby sea gulls, and
grandbaby sea gulls that would never see the sea. Generations of sea gulls would be created
from this small flock – at which point, would it be appropriate to even call
them sea gulls at all? One day these sea
gulls would become parking lot gulls, or Target gulls (Larus targetus). One day this new species would be so distinctly
different from all her sea gull friends that she would no longer be able to
mate with the sea gulls of the real sea.
She would be a new species, independent in her own right. And we – human
beings – helped make her. We played God unaware. Unknowingly we created a new
species of pigeon in sea gull form.
Unknowingly we as humans are
playing like gods every day – selecting for those species, which are most
opportunistic, most adaptable to our human and urban environments. As we continue to colonize this planet, we
are losing old species, selecting others, and quite possibly creating new
ones.
I had a high school teacher who
once asked me – If evolution suggests “survival of the fittest,” then what if this
is how it is suppose to happen? What if we,
as humans, are meant to play this role of driving out species and depleting
resources on our planet? What if it is meant to be that we lead ourselves (and
our species friends) into an era of extinction?
What legacy does any man or woman
on this earth ever want to leave? Most
people want to leave children that will carry on their name; few may leave
behind them libraries or college dormitories left in their name.
We want to perpetuate the world in
our likeness, but what if we considered perpetuating this world in our dislikeness?
What if we as humans made it our prerogative to save a species, not like
us? What if, when we passed, we gave a
small portion of our financial legacies to a species that needed our help? Of course, children are the joys of our life,
and we always need libraries. But there
is a world around us that is dying, and most of us don’t even know about it,
let along care. We are good to save what
is us, but are we not more noble to also save what it is not us?
I suppose Target sea gulls have their place in this
world. I suppose sewer rats and pigeons
do too. But how much more interesting a world it is when we have orangutans,
manatees, and monarch butterflies?
Although we fell from our Garden of
Eden, it does not mean we have to give in to destroying it. We can be a willful, good people if we want
to be. Let us be that people. Target sea
gulls (Larus targetus) of your lost
sea, I pray that you find your path back to the sea again. And Target people of your lost Eden, I pray
that you too find your path back to your Eden of a life-full, life-giving
world.
