The Extinction of the Newspaper
The narrative itself as well as most of the individual chapters commence with a headline from a newspaper article covering the story of the transport of two giraffes that miraculously survived a hurricane at sea on their cross-country trek from New Jersey to the San Diego Zoo. One page is comprised of nothing but a list of the more than twenty newspapers around the country that were part of the Associated Press Wire Service. The cities on this list stretch from San Jose to Syracuse. The historical true story this novel relates is one which fully reveals the awesome power of and almost utter dependence upon newspapers that one time marked the evolution of news reporting. The first really big extinction of the 21st century will likely one day be marked as the newspaper. While abused and misused, certainly, this story illuminates how a unity of factual information—for the most part—could inform a nation of people without necessarily corrupting them as well. Those days are over forever.
The Evolution of Animal Stories
Something exists within the stories of animals that speak to the very essence of humanity. Animals have been placed at the center of storytelling probably for as long as there has been literature. From a certain serpent in a certain garden standing in for the power of evil to corrupt us to the metaphorical fluidity of a certain white whale to ability of the various animals calling the Hundred Acre Wood home to offer a not inconsiderable degree of psychological insight into ourselves, animals have been integral characters in literature. Grown men blubber when Old Yeller must be mercifully killed by a young boy and we learn a heck of a lot we never suspected about Atticus Finch when he nails a rabid dog with a single not-exactly-perfect shot to the head.
When you toss into the literary mix a story about animals that is actually true, well, that’s just gravy with a cherry on top. An uplifting story about overcoming overwhelming odds somehow manages to give us all a little more hope and it is one of those mysteries of life that for some reason a lot of experience a little more hope when the uplifting story is about animals overcoming the odds. Maybe we just naturally figure that if something as unlikely as two giraffes surviving both a hurricane at sea and a truck ride across the country two decades before the interstate system even began, we just might be able to overcome one our own petty little problems.
The Ark of the Sixth Extinction
If you haven’t yet heard the phrase “The Sixth Extinction” then immediately congratulate yourselves for being part of that construction crew which destroyed the newspaper industry and eventually allowed millions to get their “factual updates” from podcasts and YouTube influencers. According to scientists—actual trained scientists with college degrees and stuff—the planet has undergone five major mass extinctions and we are currently at the dawn of a sixth.
The effort to transport those two giraffes across the world was part of a concerted conservation plan just beginning to be adopted at the time and which would eventually completely transform the entire concept of zoos. The story is thus a microcosm of what is going to become an absolute necessity to safeguard millions of species of creatures across the earth that includes—but does not necessarily end—with human beings themselves.
