Requiem for the Pangolin

When assailed you rolled up in a tight little ball
like a pillbug, your pale underbelly defended
by copious coppery scales, wall-to-wall,
yet could not comprehend what the geezer intended

who nabbed you from Cameroon, carried you back
to his village, and boiled you like a potato.
While big cats couldn’t crack your defense, an attack
by a hand could sure leave you as flattened as Play-Doh.

Termite- and ant-eater, bashful and humble,
harmless to humans, but brutal to bugs,
did you harbor the bug that found some way to stumble
straight into our lungs? We anticipate drugs 

and a potent vaccine, yet your kind is in peril
far graver than our kind. When you disappear,
far worse plagues will plague us (since Earth isn’t sterile)
while uncountable critters die out year by year.