Warnings

We sent warnings. We encased them in stone; giant beasts to fill your giant halls. Beasts that roam the earth no more. We sent megafauna. Oversized deer, aurochs, and woolly mammoths. Hunted to extinction. And if those lessons were lost in the mists of time, we sent dodos and thylacines and passenger pigeons. The Steller sea cow, you wiped out 27 years after discovery. Our warnings became urgent. River dolphins, northern white rhinos, western black rhinos. A thousand species of frogs and insects you never got round to naming. As the end loomed, we sent polar bears, gorillas, Sumatran elephants. All for naught. Now, as the few of you that remain plaintively wail why? we ask this question in return: How many canaries are enough? Short story by Liam Hogan from the "Triangulation: Extinction" anthology.