"Extinct, Your Aunt!"
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Pen and ink cartoon by Francis Dahl, [193-?], Alfred Otto Gross Papers.
Like the extinction of the passenger pigeon, the extinction of the heath hen was initially doubted in the public press. The popular Boston cartoonist Francis Dahl, who worked for the Boston Herald starting in 1930, presumably sent this unpublished drawing to Prof. Gross in the 1930s. It displays a disgruntled heath hen, loudly pooh-poohing the notice of its extinction. “Extinct, My Aunt,” a phrase now out of fashion but comparable to “…, my foot,” was used to express disbelief.
No record remains of Prof. Gross’s reaction to the cartoon, although he obviously fancied it enough to retain it among his papers.