APPENDIX
002
Goldfincher
Illustration by Anna Raff
In 1964, The Auklet, an “Irregular Journal of Irreverence” published by American Ornithologists’ Union (now the American Ornithological Society), featured this 007 parody, “On Her Majesty’s Ornithological Service.” It is reprinted with permission, lightly edited.
The first hint of the nectarine-hued Caribbean dawn slipped between the shutters and dappled the rumpled silken sheets on the oversized bed. As a Bare-eyed Thrush uttered its first tentative notes in the lush garden of the hotel, a somewhat more extensively bare figure stirred restlessly and then leaped up.
“What is it, James?” murmured a sleepy voice from deep within the pillow.
“Sorry my dear, but I have already overslept. Who knows what evil schemes may have already been set into motion by that arch-villain and enemy of Her Majesty’s Avifauna, the notorious Goldfincher?”
With this the lean, saturnine James Blond hastily zipped himself into his sharply creased field clothes, and opened a secret compartment in the bedpost. From this he extracted the silver .410, the badge of that little band of Her Majesty’s most trusted servants who are Licensed to Collect. Ignoring the sultry entreaties to return to bed, Blond silently let himself out of the French windows.
Meanwhile half-way across the island, the same impartial dawn light glinted from the oily nose of a pink-faced obese white man, of uncertain European extraction, who sat with his three servants around a greasy table in front of a native bar.
“It is not necessary,” he said coldly, “for you to know all the details. You are being well paid for your part in this project.” The tallest of the three servants, a rodent-faced alcoholic named Snitch, whined uncomfortably. “But sar, it is the danger to ourselves we fear. What will these strange glowing seeds do to our manhood?”
Goldfincher sighed ponderously, setting up a minor seiche in his nether dewlap. “All right then, I will explain the whole project, although your feeble minds can never comprehend the glory of it. Here in the Lesser Antilles there are hatfuls of very rare birds. Endemics, they are called. They are very, very valuable and several disreputable Museum Curators have offered me respectable sums of money to get them each a Statistically Significant Series. So I am cornering the market in Lesser Antillean Endemics.”
“But sar,” said the second servant, a small, grimy dope-addict named Bletch. “Even we, master hunters that we are, cannot be sure that we will get all of these birds. If we miss any perhaps somebody else will get them and offer them on the black market at a lower price.”
Goldfincher chuckled, the sound sending a nearby mongoose screaming into the undergrowth. “That is the beauty of my scheme. When you have captured as many specimens of these Endemics as you can, you will blanket the island with my specially prepared Radioactive Birdseed. In this way any remaining individuals will be rendered sterile and the populations will inevitably disappear. Even James Blond will be thrown off the track when my elite corps of rumour-mongers places the blame on a harmless household detergent. And I, Goldfincher, will have the only available fresh specimens of Lesser Antillean Endemics!”
Once again he chuckled evilly, causing a passing Ruddy Quail Dove to blanch in terror.
Several days later, as Goldfincher fretted at the slowness with which his contraband Series of Endemics approached Statistical Significance, James Blond lounged under a chestnut-sided beach umbrella in front of the hotel and sipped at a Pimm’s Cup while idly identifying immature terns. A shadow fell across his bronzed torso, and he looked to his right to see a lovely red-headed girl of some 22 years and some 96 centimetres pectoral circumference, clad principally in an abundant coat of freckles to which had fetchingly been added a bikini in the Black Watch tartan.
“Mr. Blond?” she half-whispered.
Blond eyed her tentatively. “And if I were he?”
“Oh Mr. Blond, you are the only one who can help me! I am Angelina MacDreft, only daughter of Angus MacDreft, manufacturer of a harmless household detergent. Some unspeakable persons have been spreading rumours that my father’s product has been responsible for a noticeable reduction in the Roadside Counts of Territorial Males of Lesser Antillean Endemics, and if these rumours are not stopped he will be ruined!”
She paused to inhale deeply, an act which Blond watched appreciatively, having been in his younger days a student of the populations of Parus major in the Hie’lands.
“Can you help me?” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Blond, who had read several of these stories before. “This has all the field marks of Goldfincher’s work.”
The girl, somewhat confused, looked about her but saw only a small flock of Yellow Grass Finches. She eyed Blond narrowly, hoping she had not placed her faith in a man who could not tell Sicalis from Spinus, but he went on to explain that he had been on the trail of the evil Goldfincher ever since he had introduced Giant Cowbirds into the Kirtland’s Warbler Refuge.
“I think I can help your father, my dear,” said Blond, “but first we must have some figures for comparison.”
The girl was not surprised at this, having heard of Blond’s insatiable appetite for foldouts-of-the-month, but soon realised he referred to Breeding Bird Censuses.
“Come with me,” he said, tossing aside his custom Armee-Ruckstande 8 × 40 Featherweights. Holding Angelina’s hand, he loped to the hotel garage, where the head mechanic quickly readied for active service Blond’s motorcycle. After gallantly ushering the redhead into the sidecar, Blond leaped into the saddle and they were off in a roar of exhaust and a spray of gravel.
Twenty minutes later, having covered every road and trail on the island, they were back at the hotel, Angelina clutching the notebook into which she had been scribbling numbers as fast as Blond called them out.
“It’s true,” said Blond, glancing quickly through the notebook. “The population of Lesser Antillean Endemics is down by no less than 12.47 percent. Clearly something is afoot.”
“Yes,” said Angelina, “it is mine. You have parked your motorcycle on it.”
“Forgive me, my dear,” said Blond, moving the cycle, “I was preoccupied. We must find Goldfincher before it is too late and the Lesser Antillean Endemics join the lost legions of the Passenger Pigeon and the Three-Dollar Annual Dues.”
“But how, James? Goldfincher and his evil henchmen might be anywhere on the island and no doubt are well aware of your mission to destroy them.”
“You, my dear, must act as bait. We will disguise you as a Lesser Antillean Endemic in breeding condition and they will without question follow you to your nest.”
Blond flung open his kit-bag and extracted two lengths of cloth. One, which was Dark Brown to Olive Grey (becoming Dusky anteriorly), he fashioned from the top of her head to her shapely pygostyle. The other, which was Buffy Greyish Brown to Greyish White, he draped about her front, leaving a large oval opening in the middle through which her deliciously freckled abdomen could pass muster in the dim light of the rainforest as an incubation patch.
Whipping from its sheath his gleaming Pfadfinder Special, Blond quickly whittled a long, slender, curved bill which he fastened on her nose. “Now, my pet, let me see you tremble.”
A convulsive series of shudders wracked the girl’s disguised torso.
“Perfect!” cried Blond exultantly, “Cinclocerthia to the life!”
He helped Angelina into the sidecar once more and they roared off to the nearest remaining patch of rainforest. Blond concealed the cycle under the rubble of the forest floor and with extreme care placed three greenish blue eggs at the base of a palm frond. He then climbed into the dense foliage of a tree fern some 20 metres from the eggs and called in a harsh whisper, “All right, my dear, remember what I have taught you!”
Angelina hopped cautiously to the edge of the patch of rainforest about half a kilometre from where Blond was concealed. She bounded into the lower branches of a tree and began calling a loud, somewhat tremulous “ture-ture-ture-ture,” trembling the while.
Not 10 minutes later a sinister black touring car slammed to a halt on the edge of the rainforest.
“Look, you fools!” whispered Goldfincher. “It’s a Cinclocerthia—or Grive Trem-bleuse in your local patois. I thought you had them all!”
The three ruffians and their leader got out of the car and began to walk quietly into shotgun range. Snitch raised his double-barrel to his shoulder.
“Stop, you imbecile!” hissed Goldfincher, pushing the gun down, for Angelina, obeying instructions to the letter, was now hopping along the ground dragging her left arm in an unmistakable Distraction Display.
“There is certainly a nest nearby,” said Goldfincher, “and a certain Curator who shall be nameless has offered a handsome bonus for a clutch of Trembler eggs. Spread out!”
Unerringly, Angelina led the four villains to the glade where Blond perched in concealment and the three greenish blue eggs awaited their fate.
“There they are!” shrieked Goldfincher, stumbling forward in greedy haste. “Never mind the bird, the eggs are far more valuable!”
The bloated Goldfincher and the three servants gathered about the nest, and just as Goldfincher was reaching into his collector’s bag for his blowpipe, Blond withdrew from his pocket a device which he had modified that morning from a TV armchair channel changer.
With a quiet smile of satisfaction he pressed the scarlet button. A tremendous explosion rocked the rainforest as the three mock trembler eggs responded to the radio waves emitted from Blond’s tiny transmitter.
Blond slid down the tree fern, walked over to the shattered remains of the four would-be egg-poachers and looked down at them broodingly.
“So perish all enemies of Her Majesty’s Endemic Avifauna!” he murmured.
Then a faint whimper at the edge of the clearing caught his ear. “My God!” he said, “it’s Angelina!”
The girl, still wrapped in her disguise, lay crumpled on the ground and Blond could see that her trembling was now no counterfeit. He turned her over gently only to find that a flying piece of eggshell had penetrated her fair bosom with soon-to-be-fatal results.
“Oh James!” she whispered, “now my father’s name can be cleared, but I wish that Fate had been kinder to us!”
“I know, my dear,” said Blond cradling her long-billed head in his lap. “But you are dying in a noble cause, in Her Majesty’s name, and your death will not be futile. I know a museum that will give me fifty pounds for the skin of an adult Cinclocerthia in breeding condition.”
And as Angelina’s eyes glazed, Blond took out his silver pencil and began to enter her data in his field catalogue.