Silence to me is like the Darth Vader to my Luke: an enemy. The comfort of the house was left behind. The forest was far too quiet. Where was the chatter of the birds, the splashing of fishing cats hunting in the rivers, the occasional grunt of a bear or yak? The forest was normally like an orchestra, with each animal playing their own part, the big ones being the low brass, the smaller ones being the woodwinds, with every step taken coming in as percussion. Yet it was quiet, like the conductor had called a rest. There was something off, something that was making these parts unnaturally quiet. Was it an apex predator, a predator who was the king of all of these animals, who were like peasants? I looked around and froze. It was as if I was Bryon Scott, frozen in time as he watched Michael Jordan smoothly pull up for a shot to win the game. A white body was up in a tree, staring down at me, a body belonging only to the elusive snow leopard, the undisputed diamond of the animal kingdom. As I stared into the creature’s eyes, it was like looking through a time machine, seeing years fly by, watching countless hunters shoot its kind dead, simply for the fur worth a million dollars. The king of this jungle looked almost… sad, worn down, afraid. I blinked, and all I saw was a spotted white tail slinking around a tree like a snake, and I would never see the creature again. But the thought stuck with me; what would the world be like if we hadn’t pulled a Holocaust on its kind?