K is for Kakapo

I'm working on an illustrated A-B-C for a young relative of mine. I decided to let the letter "K" be for "Kakapo", the critically endangered flightless giant parrot of New Zealand written about by Douglas Adams in the book Last Chance To See.


Kakapo, October 17, 2004

(This isn't the most accurate picture of a Kakapo you'll find. The legs aren't fuzzy all the way down, and the feet in this illustration lack the sense of awesome gripping power you'll see in the real thing. But on the other hand, I only spent about 5 minutes creating it in Corel Painter Classic with my WACOM Graphite tablet. I may revise it later.)

I'm on a bit of a Douglas Adams jag right now. I'm simultaneously rereading Life, The Universe, and Everything and listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide Tertiary Phase radio series. I watched the first two episodes of the Hitchhiker's Guide TV series on DVD earlier today, and I am once again listening to my home-made audiobook of Douglas Adams reading Last Chance To See.*

If you know who Douglas Adams is, it's probably because of the Hitchhiker's Guide series. (And if you don't know what that is, you probably will next summer, when the long-delayed movie is expected to be released.)

But Last Chance To See is my favorite work by Douglas Adams, and is quite possibly his best. It tells the story of his travels with zoologist Mark Carwardine and others, as they attempted to see and document some of the most endangered animals on Earth. It is also the story of the mind-numbing hassles of international travel, even back in the ancient days of 1985 and 1988.

After listening to my audiobook a few years ago I went into a bit of a Google frenzy, searching for anything I could remember being mentioned in Last Chance To See: Kakapos. Bottle Palms. Pink Pigeons. The Northern White Rhinoceros. Baiji Dolphins. Baiji Beer. Carl Jones. Richard Lewis. The Mauritius Captive Breeding Center.

I accumulated a group of links and watched sadly as some of them became dead ends. I wondered if anyone would ever attempt a follow-up to the original 1988 journeys.

A few weeks ago I was doing some Douglas Adams digging and I came across Gareth's remarkable blogsite Another Chance To See. Here was someone who had picked up the torch and was running with it. In blog entries made daily or even more often, Gareth is relaying up-to-date information on many of the animals and topics covered in Last Chance To See. And his site is extremely link-heavy, so that it can function as a jumping-off point for anyone wishing to do their own online research on Kakapos, Northern White Rhinoceroses ("Rhinoceri", I suppose, but let's not quibble while they're being slaughtered), and many other endangered species.

This weekend I gathered together all of my functioning Last Chance To See-related links links and submitted them to Gareth. I hope he finds them useful, and I hope through his efforts more people become aware of not just the wholly remarkable work that Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine did 16 years ago, but also of the plight of endangered species throughout the world. Go there and see for yourself!

*I made this by pulling out all the .wav files from my CD-ROM of the disc, purchased from Voyageur in early 2001 just before they went under, converting them to .mp3 files, and then recording them to a CD-R.