Lonesome Tonight

In memoriam for the sad loss of Lonesome George, the last of the tortoise sub-species Chelonoidis Nigra Abingdoni, who died suddenly in the Galapagos back in July 2012.

Lonesome Tonight

He survived the pirates and whalers,

the seal-hunters and invading goats;

he out-lasted all the invaders,

as they came to Galapagos in boats.

For large tortoises are valuable things,

eaten for food and killed for their oil.

He was the last of his sub-species,

the last one to walk on Santa Cruz soil.

Declared the rarest animal on Earth,

to see him the tourists were attracted.

They came daily in their great hordes,

but this his habitat badly impacted.

They moved him to a new island,

for to study him they wanted to try,

to give him a better chance of mating,

hoping that he wouldn’t be shy.

They brought him females over from Pinta,

but to bachelor habits he seemed wed;

he avoided all of these ladies’ wiles,

and not one did he take to his bed.

Although there was reputedly just one,

a small one that seemed very well-met,

but it was just a case of bad eye-sight:

turned out to be an old German helmet.

Mind you, he weighed over two hundred pounds;

his neck was three foot long and well scrawny,

and with a shell all tattered and beaten,

no wonder the girls didn’t feel horny.

But perhaps he was bored, or infertile,

or there’s a faint chance he was gay -

either way, there was no breeding took place,

so that’s the end of his legacy I’d say.

He was about a hundred years old,

so perhaps he just ran out of steam.

It’s hard being a lonely old reptile,

when there’s no-one else on your team.

No longer will Time be marked in his eyes,

or ten million years that he’s been linked.

This strange evolutionary remnant,

this last of the line, now sadly extinct.

Let’s mourn this sad loss of diversity,

the weirdest that Nature could forge:

good-bye to a conservation icon,

and a fond farewell to old Lonesome George.

It’s another bad sign of the times,

to see the end of George’s life-flight,

But isn’t the truth of the matter that,

it’s really us that’s “lonesome tonight”?

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2016