Island Hideaway 23 - Visiting Time

By Terrence Oblong

Sat, 11 Jan 2020

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"I brought you a visitor", I said. Monty waddled into the room on cue. Monty was one of the dodos, the tamest of the bunch, he would often come into the house through the dodo-flap to help himself to food (and look for hiding females). I was training him, he didn't do any tricks as such, but I had taught him to walk on order: left, right, stop, go, leap.

Having shown her first signs of life I was determined to do everything I could to stimulate Mo back to life. I read her a passage from Wikipedia about the Madagascan dodos and their extinction, then gave her a brief account of the differences between my dodos and their Madagascan cousins, getting Monty to act out the key scenes.

I didn't let Monty get on the bed with her, you never know what germs dodos may carry, but held him up for Mo to see, though of course she had her eyes closed.

I talked dodos to Mo for a while, shared a joke with Monty (dodos have a great sense of humour, but their comedic tastes are purely physical so it's impossible to relate on paper), however I had work to do. One of the city guides had commissioned me to write a series of articles about Nordic ski resorts. I wired up google and got writing.

I have said previously that I have no difficulty writing an article about absolutely anything, but journalism is easy, it isn't real. It's just filler, a by-product of 21st century capitalism. People want words. Words are reassuring, like a hot bath. People can wallow in a magazine article, a blog, an advertorial puff piece. I wish I was sufficient a writer to convey reality, my reality. How I'd love to describe the mechanics of a dodo joke, but dodo humour is the one thing I don't have it within me to write about.

No longer flying, dodos used their wings to display emotion, they are the quietest of quite species, being so focussed on hiding, and they rarely make any noise, except when they're mating. They don't tweet or sing in greeting, they flap their wings. They have their own language, but that too is silent, not based on birdsong. It’s a form of sign language, like semaphore, all based on wing positions and for that reason it’s a language mankind can understand. It had taken me a while to work it out, because I wasn't looking for it.

I fed the dodos every day and for a special treat I would give them peanuts, they were mad about peanuts, though I had to unshell them myself. One non-peanut day I had three dodos in my kitchen looking for food, but seemingly uninterested in whatever I'd put in the dodo bowl. I suddenly noticed that all three of them had their wings in the same position, right was raised slightly, left firm against the side. I decided to copy them, for my own amusement, but was staggered by their reaction. All three started leaping excitedly, as they did when I was fetching the serious food (nuts).

The wing positions meant something, I realised, and more than that, they were watching my wing positions (well, arms obviously). I must have confused them terribly, randomly hurling words around every time I gesticulated. But what could the current position mean. It suddenly dawned on me, food, they wanted food, just not what was in the bowl, so they must be asking for peanuts. I took a handful of nuts from the cupboard, shelled them, repeated my peanut stance and threw them on the floor. The dodos leapt excitedly, gobbled up the nuts, and returned to peanut stance. I fetched more nuts - the worst thing about understanding dodo, I realised, was that now the dodos could get me to do anything I wanted, like a child learning to make its first demands.

The Nordic ski article was progressing well when I suddenly had a thought. We'd not given Mo a name. I had discovered my own name by chance when observing he dodo cams. I noticed that if there was a pair of dodos together they would always adopt a certain wing position before coming to the house, and they would greet me with their wings in that same position. It was my name, I realised. The dodos had given me a name.

I hastily summoned Monty, led him back to Mo’s room, and held my arms outstretched, at 10 minutes past eight. "Mo," I said, repeating the stance. Monty copied me, and I held him up so that he could see Mo’s comatose body, then put him down and repeated my 10 minutes past eight stance.

Now that the dodos had a word for 'Mo’ it meant that I could talk to them about her. I had someone to share my secret with.