Having missed their opportunity 9m years earlier, man's ancestors and their kin now grabbed it, moving into the niches vacated by their recently exterminated Cousins.
Not merely a means for the satisfaction of human desires, nor a mere nuisanceto be exterminated, this tiny creature possesses the same dignity that anyconscious being possesses.
But as the big woods of the Mississippi Delta were chopped down, the woodpecker-with its distinctive tooting call and double knock-was slowly exterminated.
