Whooping Cranes

"...Things change. Even grass goes out of fashion. In the later Pleistocene, trees became a hot item. Forest gradually encroached on the grasslands and the water table subsided. The crane habitat, un-Sanforized, began to undergo a relentless shrinking. The sandhill crane, the whooper's smaller, plainer cousin, made the necessary adjustments, adapting good naturedly to a less grassy, less watery world. But not our bird. The whooping crane practiced the science of the particular; it enacted the singular as opposed to the general; it embodied the excetion rather than the rule. To hell with compromise! It knew what it wanted and that was that. Unlike those integrity-short teemers, including man, the whooper opted for quality instead of quantity, rejected the notion that anything is better than nothing. It would survive on its own terms or not at all..." -Tom Robbins (even cowgirls get the blues)