When I was a child, I remember reading about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, then thought to be extinct. Somehow, this wild-looking bird captured my imagination, and I always had this fantasy that someday someone would discover that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was not extinct. As I grew older and more cynical, I knew intellectually that my fantasy was ridiculous. Once something is extinct, it’s gone forever.

Except that new evidence seems to indicate that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is, in fact, not extinct. My dad heard it on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” show, in a report titled “Ivory-billed Woodpecker Rediscovered in Arkansas” (available on their Web site at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4622633).

Hearing that made my day.