Call Me Lonesome
They called us tasty flesh,
provisions, they hunted
and dragged my kind
to their dark ships.
I breathed the silence
of the thickets for years,
drew my head
into my bonehouse
until I became the last
of my species.
Meanwhile, wild goats
swallowed the island
to bare root and soil
until all the green faded.
Pale hands plucked me
into fluorescent light,
tagged my shell, named me
Lonesome George.
They watched me grow old
under a new sun,
brought females,
a frantic effort to save
what is already devastated.
Now my blood cools
into stone as I leave them
their bright lights
and blinking cameras.
And I wonder: what words
will they invent for this emptiness
approaching after me?
The Pinta Island Tortoise (Chelonoidis abingdonii)
The word ‘tortoise’ has always sounded to me like a re-spelling of ‘torture’, yet its root traces back to ‘tartaruchus’ in Late Latin, meaning ‘of Tartarus’, the ancient Greek underworld of torment. And for the giant tortoises of the Galápagos, the arrival of human beings meant precisely that: a slow fall into the cold catacomb of extinction.
For over two centuries, whalers, pirates, and seal hunters treated these ancient reptiles as provisions for their long journeys. Thousands were plucked from their habitat and dragged to the dark holds of the ships, where they could live for months without food or water until they were slaughtered for oil or their meat. What humans left behind were the wild goats, multiplying rapidly, devouring the native vegetation, and starving the island’s endemic species.
In 1971, a malacologist found a single giant tortoise on Pinta and relocated him to the Charles Darwin Research Station. From that moment, this animal’s name became a global cultural symbol: Lonesome George. For four decades, scientists worked desperately to breed him with related subspecies, yet every egg proved infertile. George's heart stopped on June 24, 2012, when he was nearly 110 years old. And his evolutionary lineage died with him, the absolute last of his species.
But who is the loneliest animal in the world? Lonesome George carried that title for long years; however, such loneliness is soon to become the painful reality of our own kind as we devour the planet.
Today, George’s taxidermied body is exhibited in a climate-controlled glass box, displayed as a ‘symbol of hope’. Still, we must stand before his remains and ask: hope of what?
Thanks for reading.
Özge Lena
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