Losing the mainstream media

1. An excerpt from yesterday's ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH:

...I had put the whole thing out of my mind. Then Nessie came along. In the midst of a hot summer, the people of Springfield have a fun story. They might even get some tourists. Why can't we have something like that?

We can.

Let me announce right now that we had a sighting last weekend of an ivory-billed woodpecker in Forest Park.

As you might remember, the scientific world was rocked in April of 2005 when researchers from Cornell University announced that an ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, had been spotted in a swamp in eastern Arkansas. Tourists and birders flocked to the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. Sadly, there have been no more sightings, and scientists now suspect the original "sighting" was probably that of a common pileated woodpecker.

But wouldn't it be great if another one had been spotted in Forest Park? An ivory-billed woodpecker in St. Louis has to be even rarer than a python in the state capital of Illinois. That would help us get through the summer doldrums.

Sure, let Springfield have its Nessie. And we'll take Woody.

2. An excerpt from a June '07 article in the Houston Chronicle:

Absurdity reigns
...Maybe they could auction guided owl hunts to raise money to fund more research on spotted owls — or ivory-billed woodpeckers. That's another recent situation that seems a little over the top on the "save the planet and everything on it" front.

A few years back, a couple of guys in a canoe thought they saw and heard an ivory-billed woodpecker in an Arkansas swamp. If they did, it was the first one anybody has seen in more than 50 years. If they didn't, which is more likely despite some scratchy audio and a short video clip that makes the Bigfoot snippet we've seen look like it was produced by Dreamworks ... well, they didn't see an ivory-billed woodpecker.

I base that conclusion on the fact that in the years since those men saw what they thought was an ivory-billed woodpecker, hundreds of equally qualified birders have gone into the same region, expanded the search area and not seen that bird.

And by the way, if it's the only ivory-billed woodpecker, it won't be too many years before searching for the thing becomes a moot point.