On any given day, there are an awful lot of birthdays. About 17.7 million people are celebrating a birthday on each day of the year, here on this big blue ball of ours. In the United States, we see about 814,000 birthdays each day.
And those numbers reflect present birthdays. Those among the living. This does not account for those who have gone on their way.
I like to look at the historical birthday lists to see who was “notable” on any given day. As you know, I write about them here, from time to time. Of course, today, here in America, we know that George Washington, the first president of our country, was born on February 22, 1732. I am not sure the United States of America would be a thing if it weren’t for this George Washington. Right now, we would probably be British America. God Save the Queen.
I won’t go into the details of his good life, as we have heard them all before. But he shares a birthday with numerous others, like Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, and Drew Barrymore, the actress.
But it is someone else’s birthday today. Dolly. Baaaaa, Dolly. In 1997, Dolly the Sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal — from an adult cell — was announced by the Roslin Institute in Scotland. She was a good sheep, she was. Wooly, you know. And lived a good long life as things go, dying on Valentine’s Day, in 2003.
Most people don’t know she was named after Dolly Parton, but I’m not quite sure why. Maybe the lab rats had a thing for Dollywood. Who knows. But this Dolly had six little lambs everywhere she went. She bore Bonnie, twins Sally and Rosie, triplets Lucy, Darcy, and Cotton.
Well, Hello Dolly.
I wanted to recognize her birthday because recently, in the news, there has been the report of the first cloned U.S. endangered species. Yes, those smarty scientists have cloned a black-footed ferret. They duplicated her from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago. She was born December 10 and they announced her on February 18. Her name is Elizabeth Ann, but I don’t know why, as I can’t think of any Elizabeth Ann’s with a theme park.
She is, however, a genetic copy of a ferret named Willa, who died in 1988. When Willa passed away, they froze her, just like Walt Disney. They used her DNA to bring Elizabeth Ann to life.
This brings up a lot of questions about regenerating species of the long gone, like the Wooly Mammoth. Do we really want Saber Tooth Tigers back? Did they go by natural selection back then, by acts of nature?
And what about the ones that humans destroyed, like the Passenger Pigeon and the Dodo bird? Is it our duty to bring those back? And who decides?
Almost every day when I write this piece, no matter the topic, Confucius comes to mind, again and again, when he said, “Life is very simple. But men insist on making it complicated.”
Again, I question his wisdom on this. Life seems pretty darn complicated to me sometimes.
This world is full of lives. And, there are those who give life and those who take it away. Sometimes it feels hopeless when I realize I have no power or input in the bigger picture of this. But that is the truth of things.
I’m not sure what they will clone next. Perhaps it will be the Great Auk. Or maybe George Washington.
But always remember, in all of this. There is only one of you, glorious you. And the world is a better place because you are here.
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Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
— Francis of Assisi
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No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
— Aesop
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Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
— Martin Luther
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A copy of a copy of a copy. The real deal.
