Truly Endangered Species

Why don’t they know? Is it really so hard to tell which species is most at risk? One week it’s elephants, the next it’s the Hairy-Nosed Wombat, after that—would you believe?—it’s frogs. But it has been a very long time since a frog turned into a Prince, and if you ask me, far and away the most endangered species are princes. They’re a billion times rarer than frogs.

Nowadays you almost never see one, and the hysteria in Australia when Prince Frederik of Denmark visited was downright embarrassing. A nice girl from Tasmania got him, but millions of women go through life without ever meeting a prince, let alone marrying one. Of course I’m speaking generally: though royal blood would be nice, a prince is handsome, sensitive, humane, generous, loyal, rich, literate, well-spoken, well-dressed—and marriageable. Ask any woman. Men like this are not just endangered, they’re on the verge of extinction.

How to increase their numbers is a puzzle. Frogs probably only need to be pushed together in a Petri dish, but princes are too temperamental for that. Personally I favor cloning, though there would need to be wide agreement before a suitable specimen was chosen. Meanwhile a trial run using a few nail-parings from the Danish court might be useful. Fifty percent of humanity would applaud.

April 2005