Roger Peet

Roger Peet
Passenger Pigeons
$35

This is number three in a series about extinct species and the humans that killed them off. You've heard of Passenger Pigeons, the bird that was once the most numerous species in the world and was hunted to extinction. The story has a cruel epigraph: By 1896 only 250,000 pigeons remained, down from some two billion. These last came together in a nesting flock outside Bowling Green, Ohio. Hunters alerted by telegraph arrived with all swiftness and proceeded to slaughter nearly all of the birds. 40,000 were "wasted." Over 100,000 newborn chicks were abandoned to the elements. Some 5,000 escaped.
The massive kill was to be shipped in boxcars to markets in the East, but there had been a derailment on the line. The carcasses putrefied in their boxcars and all 200,000 birds were dumped in a ravine near the rail depot. The last passenger pigeon died in captivity on 1 September 1914.
Fun-time puzzle: Spot the exponential curve denoting current rates of extinction that is plotted along the x-axis of this print!

7 color stencil with blockprint
14" x 17"
signed/numbered