Hannah > Books: animal-welfare‎ (21)

Saola were more than a surprise. They were a mystery drawn from a largely uninventoried habitat that promised still futher surprises. They were the embodiment of a land of marvels.

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So distant is the saola from the lumbering ruminants with which it shares the greater part of its genes that it seems closer, at least in a metaphorical way, to a creature of myth. In its spirit - or perhaps only in the spirit that the Westerners pursuing it imagine it to have - the saola seems kindred to the fabled unicorn of medieval lore. Like the unicorn, it is as rare as the rarest thing on earth.

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Consider extinction: It is an abstraction, unexplorable by the senses. It is an absense, a vacuum, a negative space. Although the fact of extinction is more durable than diamonds or steel, it is as incorpreal as smoke.