The Last Call

1987. A Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird lets out a haunting call from atop a branch. This story is based off the video of the final call of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō male.

Where are you, my love? Where are you?

I feel the answer deep inside. I am alone.

Where are you, my love? Where are you?

I keep calling out. There is no point in stopping. Perhaps a miracle might occur.

There is a man with a camera below. I don't know what he's doing, but I don't care. He speaks loudly. I cry louder.

His name is David Boynton. We're in the Alakaʻi Wilderness Preserve of Kauaʻi, Hawaii. I don't know this and I never will. He has been trying to protect me for reasons I will never know. He shifts the camera to point at me, attempting to immortalize my desperation.

Where are you?

The need to mate has become dire. I refuse be the end of this bloodline. And yet, I haven't seen any others in days, weeks, months...

My chest feels empty. There is nothing in me more than the instinct to survive. My wings carry me through the air, but they've been pinned to this branch. I wish hell upon whatever did this to me. But I know there is no hope.

Trees whisper among themselves, laughing at me and my desperate efforts. I puff out my chest. There is hope. There is always hope. At the top of my lungs, I scream - a sound nothing but a haunting tune in the wind.

I vaguely remember the last female I had seen. She was on the ground, crying in pain. Her nest had been crushed by a pig or a cat or a rat. I wonder whether she's still on that ground, her body decaying with the brown fallen foliage.

If she is, she isn't answering my call. She must have been lost to Death, like my brother and sister and father and mother.

But maybe she just hasn't heard me sing. Maybe she's alive and cannot hear.

Where are you, my love, where have you gone? When will you return? I scream.

The song is meant to be a duet, a duet that cannot be finished.

Either way, I will continue to sing my part until death stops me.

Tonight is more silent than ever. You can hear crickets on the floors. I am skinny and hungry. But to survive, I don't need to eat or drink - I need to live.

There's a whisper in the wind of someone calling back.

Hello, my love, I'm right here.

It's my imagination. I'm aware of it. But I sing back because my life and so many others depend on it.

Hello, my love, I've found you at last. I am no longer singing - it is strangling me. I am screaming and crying and sputtering. It sounds beautiful.

The man and the camera below have gone still. I think they are watching me. Predators waiting to pounce.

Come and get me, I shout. I'm right here.

I think I catch the cameraman with a sad smile on his strange face. I stop. They know what I don't. They know I won't be here for much longer.

I look up to the dark sky. The stars don't shine like they used to. Now, they're mere specks in the dark blue. I remember when they were blindingly bright.

I continue singing for a female that isn't there.

Where are you, my love?

Hello, my love, I'm right here.

There are no lyrics to this song. It's less of a tune, more of a feeling. A song that one sings when feeling lonely. And then a partner sings back, and the two are lonely together. It's a cheerful song, one to show that you aren't alone. The song is all I know. Taught to me by my father and mother and brothers and sisters.

Now it takes on an eerie melancholy whistle. I'm no longer singing to find a lover - I'm singing to find a way home.

Where are you, my love? Where are you?

A rustle between the branches of a nearby tree makes my eyes dart from the sky to the leaves. For a second, I think I see a female, and I call louder than ever - but it's another bird of some kind. How I long to be him - free of disease, flying around without a care. I watch this bird for a while as I sing. He can't see me or my dark brown body within the foliage of ʻōhiʻa trees. He snatches up an insect and flutters off into the night without a sound. I watch him until his black shape disappears into the trees.

Where are you, my love? Where are you?

I vaguely wonder why the humans below don't videotape that bird - the bird with working wings and a full belly. Instead their teary eyes are on me. Scrawny. Weak.

I think about the other female I had seen from afar. Killed by the wretched winds of a hurricane. Her neck snapped in two as it hit a branch. She was the last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō I had seen. No other bird had sung the same since.

Where are you, my love? Where are you?

There's a silence that envelopes the forest when I'm gone. I passed a while ago. The last one of my species. I didn't know this.

The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird has been classified as extinct. Avian Malaria, deforestation and invasive species' were what caused the massive decline in numbers. I found Death and I welcomed it, because that was the only thing I could do.

The video that David Boynton took is immortal. They describe it as the last video found of me, the last video of my kind. It's haunting.

My brothers and sisters will never find eachother again. Erased from the earth. Gone.

Now, I will never find out where my love had gone.

Where are you, my love? Where are you?