Dire Wolf (10,000 BC)

Canis dirus
We were going along okay when you upped

& changed the status quo. Our Super-sized

Menu died off through your public meddling.

Your nutritional requirements affected us direly,

Our epoch had evolved the first Atkins Diet, all

Protein enriched, low carbs but you killed that fad.

Pride. That’s what tipped it. Slower than gray wolves

We had to scavenge for a living. Our frames couldn’t

Keep up with the new, trendy runners. Too heavy in

The jaw from eating all those giant bison. Desire ruled

At the end, if some prey got trapped in a tar pit, we lost

Our heads & hides. Pack stupid. We inhabit your darkest

Memories. Programmers get us. Now only noobs fear.

For we hunt again in electronic forests; pixel hungry.


Darling Downs Hopping Mouse (1840 AD)

Notomys mordax
You wouldn’t have known us but for a single skull

Found in the nineteenth century, but all that really

Told you is that we had a brain once & a face too.

The rest you’ve had to work out for yourselves.

Like our copious habit for mating on grass stems

Our night passion bending blades until the climax

Touched ground; fervor earthed in the deep, black

Darling Downs soil.  Landfucking you’d call it, an

Exchange of sex-knowledge among mammal species.

Lucky then, our skull wasn’t discovered in those owl

Pellets like our cousin’s was – think of the inter-class

Innuendo that would’ve spread. Our preoccupation

With sex usurped by death eventually, all Nazis those

Pests & as for our extinction; we hopped right to it!


Quagga (1883 AD)

Equus quagga quagga
You’re a weird mob alright, a species obsessed

With boom & bust cycles, ours in particular. First

You cleared us away for your four-legged friends

After making a fortune on meat jerky & leather.

Concentration camp facilities you installed free

Of charge to regulate our demise, then confusion

Reigned as to who you were killing. Zebra brethren?

Native South African? Or somebody entirely new?

We were dead by the time you reached consensus,

So you turned to our DNA to solve this dilemma,

& hatched a scheme in some museum coffee shop.

Your Island of Doctor Moreau morbid fascination;

Experiment & start again! Breed us into existence?

At least you’ll have our name right in retrospection.


Ryukyu kingfisher (1887 AD)

Halcyon miyakoensis
Ah … this culture suited us down to a tree.

Avian Ronin, lordless we served no one else

But ourselves, splitting the infinity of freshwater

Our beaks tempered steel folded a thousand times

In evolution’s forge. Pommel jewel eyes cut fish,

Our spirituality secure only on a risen stomach.

We were a whisper, a ghost in the shell of nature.

Echoes of us reverb in the single specimen you

Took, blood legs, blood bill, painted-warrior class

We killed clinically, fluid death momentum held.

Honour bound us to end it all; ancient practice

Unfolded in dark canopies. Trees saw everything.

Bark writ; the scratches indecipherable to you.

We left your race little to ponder & halcyon days. 


Lesser Bilby (1967 AD)

Macrotis leucura
You were so confused, but then so were we.

Rabbits you thought us, on first impressions

Then our nasty little temperament bit through.

Rodents we preyed on, so un-rabbit like, so

Unlike Peter with his naughty habits of human

Baiting. We became fox food, floor rugs, ironic

Then, those coneys out-competed us, their broods

Superior, their ears cuter somehow? They received

Easter Bunny largesse; nursery rhyme cultural capital.

Lolly companies bank-rolled their cause, your species’

Sweet teeth too. We narrate all this from the hollow

Memory of a skull found lying at the base of wedge-

Tailed eagle’s nest in 1967.  The referendum on our

Extinction was carried; cursed, rabbit gerrymander.


Gastric-Brooding Frog – Southern & Northern (1984 AD)

Rheobatrachus silus & Rheobatrachus vitellinus
Our story is so Greek, a classic tale of misadventure.

The tragedy is that you’ve missed it all most probably.

None of you witnessed our godlike qualities but we’ll

Share them anyhow. Our little ones sprung fully formed

From our mouths (we know, so like Chronus spitting out

His eccentric brood). A warped conception compared to you!

The last Southern captive died in 1984 – Big Brother’s vision

It seems only affected us! Then you discovered our Northern

Offspring…too late as usual, they’ve never been seen again!

The debate still rages – did we swallow our eggs or tadpoles?

A hormone stopped the juices; some were sacrificed for that!

What killed us? Rising temperatures, moisture drying out at

Altitude?  Were we slimy canaries for the Greenhouse effect?

Perhaps, like Zeus’ clutch we turned on our kin & ate them!


Giant Galapagos Tortoise (ii) (c. 1830 – 2006 AD)
So my grand prediction was a little askew.

You outlived me in the end; a human touch

Only two months eleven days separated us

From our hyped celebrity. Maybe you had

To follow my new path to a starry waterfall;

Clusters of shell-thin galaxies, grazing on

Hibiscus coloured nebulas, the beak shears

Curvature of space oddity. After 176 years

Of earth hugging & scraping dirt over old

Memories I was due this last voyage. We

Both got it in the heart; time’s hooked barbs

Reversed so you can’t pull them out. We’ve

Dematerialised beyond time & space. Yes, a

Poor Galifreyan I made, but then so did you.


Harriet died June 23 2006

Steve Irwin died 04 September 2006