Does Inspector Clouseau Know About This?*

This is about 1 of those fun bits of info that is more likely to come up on Jeopardy! rather than in real life. We all know about the Pink Panther, the fictional diamond in all those movies that also brought the cartoon character to the big screen. Well he may be fictional, but there is such a thing as The Pink Pigeon. You read that right, that cute bird on the right is a Nesoenas mayeri aka pink pigeon. The native of Mauritius is an endangered species. There are currently about 500 of the birds living. About 393 birds now live on Mauritius.

An adult pigeon is about 32 cm from beak to tail & weighs about 350 grams. They have pale pink plumage on their head, shoulders and underside, along with pink feet and pink beak. They have dark brown wings, and a broad, reddish-brown tail. They have dark brown eyes surrounded by a ring of red skin.

The only reason that I am even bringing this up is because last weekend there was an article about a female moving into the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. IA. She is waiting a mate as a part of a breeding program to save the species from extinction. (Rare pink pigeon awaits mate at zoo) As a result of the program the bird was downlisted from critically endangered to endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List in 2006.

The flight call is a short, hard, nasal hoo hoo. The mating call is a sort of coo-cooo with a twittering finish. The male courts the female with a "step and bow" display. The female usually lays 2 eggs with the couple taking turns over the 2 week incubation period sitting on the eggs. The male incubates during the day, and the female during night and early day.

That an Iowa zoo was selected to help save this unique creation of God says a lot about the state & especially about the zoo.

& while I applaud the efforts to save the bird it does raise a question in my mind. Proponants of evolution talk about survival of the fittest with its implication that if a species can't adopt shouldn't survive. Yet many of these same people push for saving endangered species. Why?

I think they should work to save species like this. The real answer to "why?" is something totally different & something these people won't like. 1st of all, this is a uniue creature created by God. When God created man as the summit of creation, He assigned stewardship of the Earth to man. Good stewardship is why we should be taking care of creation, not any idea that creation is divine or more important than man.

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*On 2nd thought, maybe it is better he doesn't.