I first wrote about Rosie and her misadventures for the Living Desert newsletter, and soon she became our most popular animal resident. Elementary school groups, foreign tourists, and reporters from all over the country wanted to see “Rosie the Reluctant Bighorn.” We sold Rosie T-shirts, coasters, coffee mugs and posters in the Park’s gift shop. Park guides told her story a dozen times a day. I became her press agent and she helped me spread Living Desert’s conservation message to people who might otherwise have never heard it. We made a good team. Today, Rosie is an “Animal Ambassador.” She visits local elementary schools so that children can look into the big yellow eyes and touch the horns of an animal on the verge of vanishing from the wild forever. Because we tend to care more for that which we understand, Rosie’s connection with humans plays an important role in the effort to save her species. I am lucky to have known Rosie and hopeful that her story may help alter what today seems like an inevitable outcome. What a loss it will be when her kind no longer forages on the rocky slopes of the Santa Rosas, when Peninsular bighorns become just another name on the list of species we couldn’t do--or didn’t do--enough to save. Harley Patrick (LNF 2000) is the Acquistions Editor at Hellgate/Oasis Press and teaches part-time at Southern Oregon University in Ashland.