We do not know as much as we think

I have been looking at pictures of endangered species and wondering if there are ways that we, the people, are rushing to judgment and thinking that we have been stupid and missed looking for the animals and missing or looking in the wrong places to find the animals and not that they are extinct. I keep thinking that the animals are there but we aren't seeing them or have misidentified them as something else. I keep hearing animals are still existing but not where we are looking. Maybe I am naive; that is actually true -- me being naive -- but I have been naive and I continue to be naive. I do not have knowledge of everywhere and I do not see everything and am at the mercy of reports from places I have never seen and will never see.

I am naive. For all the places I have been to and lived, I have not seen it all or done it all. I am naive and I have little knowledge of the world, far less than I claim or that I have actually seen. I was born with a desire to do more, see more, be more than I planned when I was a child and that has not come about; I am sixty-five and it may be too late for me -- but I hope I still have time; I actually plan to live to be 150 and I'm little more than halfway there.

I am amazed by the diversity of the animals that are out here in the world and I am amazed by the way that animals continue to surprise and amaze me for they are as adaptable as we, the humans, are. Animals can live with us and do not turn into the horror stories we imagine.

The animals have not turned against us as horror stories imagine -- and we imagine for ourselves. Fear is our first and foremost feeling we feel and are horror-stricken by the fears we imagine. It is no wonder that we read and seek out when we turn to read and imagine what is ahead of us. Good thing there continues to be a readymade market for aspiring authors, botanists, paleo-whatever that wait for such things and provide places for them ready to provide readers for their wares.

I should know. I am a writer. I consider continuing to write for the chance to take my place among them.

In that I am naive; I hope for the chance to write a book and have people enjoy what I write, asking for more -- to which I will readily apply.

I am also willing to allow myself to fail, but I do not think I will fail because I will continue writing and sending my work out to be judged and hopefully accepted. I am not THAT delusional.

The more pictures I see and the more reports I read about scientists finding they were wrong about the animals being extinct. Scientists are always finding that the animals they think are extinct and actually misidentified. I am hopeful and wish for the best; the same belief that I count on when greeting the news that the earth is getting hotter and the seasons, especially the winters, shorter.

I have grown up and experienced more than my share of outcomes and have seen supposedly extinct animals come back -- like the buffalo. Buffalo -- or bison -- roam the prairies as they once did, but are limited by the actual fact that these buffalo are from a far smaller gene pool than once swelled the herds when the herds were made smaller by the fact that westerners and Indians drove thousands of them off cliffs in order to keep the remaining buffalo from finding out the tricks that hunters used to take them down.

It is rather like the remaining buffalo were not that smart -- or so they say. Animals are smarter than we give them credit for and far smarter than we as humans believe now that we examine and understand how smart they are. There is so much more to this fact than we are ready -- or actually understand -- to believe.

That is all. Disperse.