Othersphere Page 29

  “So you went there,” Mom said. “To that other world.”

  I nodded.

  “What was it like?”

  “Beautiful, magical, dangerous,” I said. “But I can’t ever go back.”

  Her face was very serious. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I know it was important to you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Because this world is all those things, too. And it also has everyone I love.”

  Mom sniffed, blinking. Her eyes were sparkling a little too brightly. “I love you, honey.”

  “Love you, too, Mom.”

  She wiped her eyes quickly and raised her voice. “Caleb, you drive her safely back or you’ll be hearing from me!”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Talk to you soon, Mom,” I said, and ended the call.

  I looked out the windshield. Caleb had turned onto a smaller service road and kept the headlights off. We bumped along, guided by the light from the stars. Over on a parallel road, a horde of flashing police cars, sirens blaring, zoomed back the way we’d come. The sight stirred a few memories.

  “Coming back from battle under the evening sky with Desdemona Grey,” Caleb said. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  “I can think of something even better,” I said, and ran my hand over his knee and down the inside of his thigh.

  Caleb shot me a look and lifted his foot off the accelerator. The car rolled to a stop, and he turned the engine off. His dark eyes had a reckless, determined look that turned all my muscles to jelly.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand. He opened his car door and pulled me out his side of the SUV. I stumbled onto the dirt road, wearing nothing but his long dark coat, and into his arms.

  Caleb’s lips met mine with wild certainty as his hands slid under the coat to circle my bare waist. “Was that what you were thinking of?” he murmured against my mouth.

  “Yes,” I said softly. “That’s even better.”

  Around us crickets were chirping their concert to the night. The moon peeped from behind a bank of clouds rimmed with silver, and the nondescript side road on the half-deserted edge of town was transformed into a glowing wonderland.

  BEYOND THE STORY

  EXTINCTION AND BEYOND

  While I was writing Othermoon in 2011, the Western black rhinoceros, a subspecies of rhino that dwelled mostly in Cameroon, was declared officially extinct due to poaching. The news was painful to hear. I love animals. The world is a magnificent place thanks to its incredible biodiversity. Every time another species is destroyed by humans, everyone loses.

  The problem goes far beyond the rhinos and elephants being slaughtered in record numbers for their horns and tusks, beyond the fact that tigers are vanishing from India, Russia, Thailand, and Indonesia due to trade in their parts and destruction of their habitat. The horrible truth is that dozens of species, plants, and animals are going extinct every single day, at a rate that far exceeds any since the mass die-off of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. Scientists believe we’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction to happen in the last half billion years, with species being lost at 1,000 to 10,000 times the normal “background” rate. (For more information on the extinction crisis, try this site: www.extinctioncrisis.org)

  No one knows the diversity in the world, not even to the

  nearest order of magnitude. . . . We don’t know for sure how

  many species there are, where they can be found or how fast

  they’re disappearing. It’s like having astronomy without

  knowing where the stars are.

  —EDMUND O. WILSON, biologist and environmentalist

  The difference between the time of the dinosaurs and now is that currently 99 percent of all extinctions occur because of humanity. We’re the ones bumbling into pristine environments and polluting or destroying them. We’re the ones hunting down elephants for ivory or smuggling rare turtles off their beaches. Illegal trade in wildlife is the third largest in the world, after drugs and arms, and the money fuels terrorist and insurgent organizations all over the world.

  It’s the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is

  happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause.

  —RICHARD LEAKEY, paleontologist and conservationist

  Now that I’ve thoroughly depressed you, time for an injection of hope. We’re the problem, so we can be the solution. A lot of organizations are working to make things better. Check out the links at the end of this piece for places you can go online to help. And don’t despair—bald eagles were down to 412 breeding pairs by 1950, but then the US protected them by law. Now their numbers are estimated to be over 200,000! And in the 1940s there were only around 40 Amur tigers left in the wild. Today those numbers are closer to 400. Change for the better is possible.

  Few problems are less recognized, but more important than,

  the accelerating disappearance of the earth’s biological resources.

  In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is

  busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched.

  —PAUL EHRLICH, Nobel Prize–winning scientist

  So now you know why I included so many extinct species in Othersphere. I wanted readers to feel the magnificence of nature and appreciate how much we still have to lose. In my books, the Tribunal has wiped out most of the different kinds of shifters. No one has heard from the tiger-shifters in nearly twenty years, and other shifters fear that means they, too, have been made extinct.

  Then Dez and her friends go to Othersphere and find—well, I’m not going to spoil it here in case you haven’t read the book, but I featured a number of species that have gone extinct over the millennia to showcase the issue of extinction, and because the animals are supercool.

  The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that

  mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of

  the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the

  chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the

  storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward

  across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns

  flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a

  shifting maze above the beach—why, the loss is like the loss

  of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time.

  —THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 26th President of the United States

  Here are some fun facts about the extinct animals I featured in Othersphere.

  Quetzalcoatlus

  The largest creature ever to have flown in our world, named after an Aztec god, this pterosaur was as large as a private jet airplane. The exact dimensions are debated, but the coldblooded creature’s wingspan was at least thirty feet wide. Compare that to the largest flying creature currently on our earth, the condor, with a wingspan of “only” ten feet! You can see footage of an animated Quetzalcoatlus flying here:

  Megatherium

  This ancient ancestor of the tree sloth was one of the largest land animals on earth until about 8,000 years ago. They were over twenty feet long and weighed up to five tons. Like elephants, they lived in large family groups. We have fossil evidence of their footsteps, which show they often stood up on their hind feet, probably to reach foliage to eat. But scientists believe they might have also opportunistically dined on carrion killed by carnivores, using their huge claws and massive strength to drive off the likes of sabre-tooth tigers and dire wolves. Here’s a fantastic video animation of a Megatherium taking food from predators:

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-OWgVgvtc

  Dire Wolves

  Canis dirus (“fearsome dog”) was 25 percent larger than the modern gray wolf, with a bite 130 percent more powerful. But this North and South American creature was very similar to modern wolves in that they hunted in packs and lived in large family units. There’s a long, fascinating video documentary online about dire
wolves here:

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7hDJvkzjw

  I have a particular fondness for the dire wolf, not only because they remind me of London, but because I vividly remember my first visit to the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits as a child, where I stood aghast at the sight of an entire wall covered in dire wolf skulls. Also on display there: ground sloth skeletons, camels, extinct horses, mammoths, and of course, Smilodon, aka the saber-toothed cat. If you’re ever in Los Angeles, it’s a great place to visit. Or check it out online:

  www.tarpits.org

  For if one link in nature’s chain might be lost, another might

  be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  Last, but certainly not least, my personal favorite, for obvious reasons....

  Caspian, Java, and Bali Tiger Subspecies

  The Bali tiger (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali_tiger) was around the size of a leopard, the smallest of the tigers, with males reaching only around 220 pounds. The Javan tiger (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javan_tiger) was a bit larger, with males reaching up to 310 pounds. Because both were isolated on islands, they each evolved to have distinctive fur colors, stripe patterns, and head shapes.

  The Caspian tiger (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_tiger) was around the size of the current Bengal tiger () with a wide range around the southern end of the Caspian Sea, from Turkey through Iran, all the way to the western deserts of China. One fascinating tidbit about the Caspian tiger is that the Kazakh people referred to it as the “road” or “traveling leopard” because it would follow migrating herds of preferred prey over large distances, which is markedly different behavior from its more territorial cousins in Siberia and India.

  The Caspian tiger was most closely related genetically to the Amur or Siberian tigers (my favorite, of course; animals.nationalgeographic. com/animals/mammals/siberian-tiger), and some scientists have proposed introducing Amur tigers to the areas where the Caspian tiger once ranged. But without large tracts of undeveloped land containing a large prey population, the proposed region is currently unsuitable for re-introduction. Alas.

  What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone,

  men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For

  whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man.

  All things are connected.

  —CHIEF SEATTLE

  If you’re wondering about species currently at risk or recently extinct around the world, here are two links with lists, information, and photos (there are a lot more if you go looking):

  To hunt a species to extinction is not logical.

  —SPOCK, IN STAR TREK IV

  Should we bring back species that have gone extinct? That’s the fascinating question raised by recent advances in cloning. It’s similar to the thought that crosses Dez’s mind in Othersphere when she comes across tiger subspecies in the other world that are extinct in ours. It would be fascinating in some ways, but problematic in others.

  You can read about both sides of the issue on the National Geographic site here:

  www.nationalgeographic.com/deextinction

  The full cover story National Geographic did on “de-extinction” is here:

  Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing

  because he could only do a little.

  —EDMUND BURKE, Irish statesman and philosopher

  If you’re wondering “What can I do to make a difference?” below are some of the things I do. It doesn’t seem like much, but the more of us who try to make things change, the more likely it is to happen.

  But do your own research and make up your own mind. I’ve included links with more information, but it’s easy to find your own as well.

  1. Sign up to get updates from organizations like www.WWF.organdwildlifeconservationnetwork.org. They’ll keep you informed and give you easy ways to contact your legislators and leaders all over the world who can make a difference for wildlife.

  2. Try to live as sustainably as you can. This means different things for different people. You can try recycling, composting, eating mindfully, conserving energy, gardening, and so on.

  3. Avoid supporting the trade in illegal wildlife or abuse of wild animals, particularly when you travel. For example, when I went to Thailand, I decided not to go to one of the controversial tiger temples or parks there, where visitors handle the tigers. It’s very tempting to go because the animals are so intriguing, but if you see an animal behaving in a manner contradictory to its wild nature, odds are that animal is being grossly mistreated. For that reason, I also avoid giving money to any venue where wild animals are forced to perform.

  4. Raise awareness via social networks (without being too obnoxious). I try not to deluge people with requests to sign petitions and so on when I tweet or post on Facebook, but I’ve seen the power of social media. Education is the key to making any lasting change.

  5. When you support charities, consider organizations that protect wildlife and preserve natural habitats. Along with the World Wildlife Fund (www.wwf.org) and the Wildlife Conservation Network (wildlifeconservation network.org). I recommend (no surprise here if you’ve read my books) the Snow Leopard Trust (www.snowleopard.org), Tiger Time (tigertime.info), and Panthera (www.Panthera.org), which focus on conservation of big cats.

  Here are some lists by reputable sites of other things you can do:

  www.wikihow.com/Help-Endangered-Animals

  www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/extinction-tips-47051605

  In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

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  Copyright © 2014 Nina Berry

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-9238-4

  First Electronic Edition: January 2014

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7582-9239-1

  ISBN-10: 0-7582-9239-2