ENDANGERED: Fine Art & Photography Contest 2017 Submission.

La Petit Morte by Cynthia Parry. All Rights Reserved.

Here on the East End of Long Island the demands of population growth often compete with the needs of animals. Two groups of animals have been especially impacted of late: white tail deer and mute swans. Recent legislation in NYS has set as its goal the eradication of mute swans from our waterways; similarly, white tail deer populations are routinely treated as pests, with sponsored efforts to "cull" them, including the hiring of professional sharpshooters in one local town.

With such casual assaults on our wildlife, is it any wonder that we also have a casual attitude toward killing each other? Home on the Range speaks to this devaluation, while La Petit Morte presents the loss of one goose's life and the devastation of this loss on its mate. It is based on a scene I came upon as I drove to work in pre-dawn darkness: the broken body lying on the shoulder of the road and the mate hovering beside it as the rest of us raced toward our destinations, mindless of the tragedy nearby.

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