Octavio Pineda - Animal SOS Animal

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.

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.

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.

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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