It’s okay — I had never heard the term either, until I read about it in Saturday’s “The Good Stuff,” a regular weekly CNN online column. And after reading about it, I have to ask: How in hell do the folks at CNN define “good”??!!!

Because they’re not talking about preventing the extinction of our earth’s living creatures. Oh, no. What they are talking about is the following:

“A biotech startup called Colossal, which has dubbed itself the ‘de-extinction company,’ has its sights on reviving the 4,000-years-extinct wooly [sic] mammoth.”

I don’t mean to be a party-pooper, but that just sounds bad to me. I mean, really, really bad!!!

Think about it . . . would you want one of those guys wandering into your yard?

But don’t run for the hills just yet. A further reading explains that such a project would require a great deal of genetic engineering, artificial intelligence (a scary concept in itself), and most likely several lifetimes to accomplish. In the meantime, they’re beginning in Botswana, working with a wildlife foundation called Elephant Havens, to monitor the behavior of orphaned elephants and gather genomic data on each animal. Their goal is to provide a blueprint for “releasing the elephants into the wild now, and mammoth hybrids to the tundra in the far future.”

Oh. Well, I feel much better now.

Seriously??!!! This is their goal? Has anyone thought to ask them one simple question: “Why?” Have they not seen Jurassic Park? I mean, why would any sane individual want to bring back prehistoric beasts when our planet is already struggling to preserve its existing animal life . . . including humans? Shouldn’t they be thinking first of applying their expertise toward something useful, like . . . oh, I don’t know . . . say, reversing global warming? Or feeding the world’s hungry? Or inventing a non-nuclear weapon that could be used to stop a Woolly Mammoth if it tried to carry off your pet pig?

And another question comes to mind: After the Woolly Mammoth, what’s next? Tyrannosaurus Rex, perhaps? A herd of Basilosaurus? Or how about a designer Glyptodon or two? Would it be legal to hunt them? Or domesticate them as house pets? By the way, what do they eat? Us?

Obviously, I don’t have the answers to any of these questions. I do know, however, that I’m very relieved that I won’t be around to see the birth of the first new-age Woolly Mammoth, or any of the other scary creatures as they reemerge from the primal ooze of eons past. It’s all I can do to coexist with the alligators in the pond up the road.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/24/23