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Bye Bye Birdie
By Joe Pivetti

Inca was the last Carolina parakeet Who became a museum display for the elite Until she was poorly stowed and the specie loss became complete. These too brave confederates went extinct Because shotguns pushed them past the brink When they kept returning to the site of the plink. The Koa Finch went missing Thanks to bird collecting And the lure of imitative whistling. The great ornithologist Rothschild Was key to Koas going from the wild Along with eight other Hawaiian avian species he compiled. Tibbles the cat hunted down many tens Of flightless Stephens Island wrens For lighthouse master Lyall's collections. Some others were bottled, sold and sent To collectors like Rothschild for exhibition. And soon after, Tibbles' kittens completed the extinction. Also extinguished by man were the 12-feet tall Moa, The Great (awkward) Awk and the funny looking Dodo. The Maoris hunted the Moa and burned their habitat to farm, Long before European seamen deemed dining on Dodos would do no great harm. The flightless Great Awk fished waters off of St. Kilda, the Faroes, Iceland and Funk Until down collectors plucked every flippered one...and stomped on their last egg like it was junk. And when it comes to wings, Wisconsin's billion Passenger Pigeons could blot out the sun Where worried farmers vied with burning sulfur, whiskey-soaked grain and guns. Communal roosting and gregariousness made these pigeons sitting ducks, And in one shot contest the victor downed 30,000 of them to win a few bucks. The last free bird, Buttons, was mounted by the Pike County, Ohio, sheriff's wife; With Martha, the last prisoner pigeon, passing away at the Cincinnati zoo in addled strife.