"Howard Waldrop - The Ugly Chickens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

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The Ugly Chickens
by Howard Waldrop


My car was broken, and I had a class to teach at eleven. So I took the
city bus, something I rarely do.

I spent last summer crawling through The Big Thicket with cameras
and tape recorder, photographing and taping two of the last ivory-billed
woodpeckers on the earth. You can see the films at your local Audubon
Society showroom.

This year I wanted something just as flashy but a little less taxing.
Perhaps a population study on the Bermuda cahow, or the New Zealand
takahe. A month or so in the warm (not hot) sun would do me a world
of good. To say nothing of the advance of science.

I was idly leafing through Greenway's Extinct and Vanishing Birds of
the World. The city bus was winding its way through the ritzy
neighborhoods of Austin, stopping to let off the chicanas, black
women, and Vietnamese who tended the kitchens and gardens of the
rich.

"I haven't seen any of those ugly chickens in a long time," said a voice
close by.

A grey-haired lady was leaning across the aisle toward me.

I looked at her, then around. Maybe she was a shopping-bag lady.
Maybe she was just talking. I looked straight at her. No doubt about it,
she was talking to me. She was waiting for an answer.

"I used to live near some folks who raised them when I was a girl," she
said. She pointed.

I looked down at the page my book was open to.

What I should have said was: "That is quite impossible, madam. This is
a drawing of an extinct bird of the island of Mauritius. It is perhaps the
most famous dead bird in the world. Maybe you are mistaking this
drawing for that of some rare Asiatic turkey, peafowl, or pheasant. I am
sorry, but you are mistaken."

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