The fear of dying alone isn’t a rare one, but to die as the last of your kind? That’s the kind of heartbreak that screams for a song.
Lonesome George breathed his last in June of 2012, and efforts to mate him with ladies of similar species failed to produce a viable egg.
As Adam Cole — writer of this sad, little tune — explained at NPR:
I remember where I was when I learned that Lonesome George had died. It was late June in 2012, and I was at the airport waiting for a flight. I started writing this song on the plane.
George was soon airborne, too. His body was shipped to the United States, where an expert taxidermist painstakingly preserved his hide and shell. I went to see the final product — a lifelike George, with his impressive neck stretched its full length — in a display case at the American Museum of Natural History, where he was called “The Face of Extinction.”
Grab the tissue box, and give it a listen.
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