Read Online Pepsi Bears and Other Stories by Anson Cameron - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anson Cameron
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break-dancing-rabbit motif were chosen by the foremost kindergarten in Hamburg. And anyway, most of the buyers of your birds were zoos and wildlife parks and researchers ⦠the well-regarded carers of birds.â
âBullshit. Fat frauleins in housecoats poking marshmallows through bars to pink cockatoos. Pudden-head sons of technocrats bored with Xbox who want an eagle for Christmas to toss rats at. Pole-dancers looking for a new angle who think itâd be cool if they could train a parrot to pull the bow on their bikini undone. Shopping centres using pretty birds to distract shoppers from ugly prices. CEOs who think because their company logo is a falcon itâd be a good idea to imprison a real one in the atrium of their skyscraper. I met a hotelier in Düsseldorf who ordered an egret for his fibreglass lake from your Wolfi. It was tethered there in the sparkling blue chlorinated water while kids splashed at ball games all around it.â
âYou think Wolfi didnât care for birds?â
âI think Wolfi was a treasure hunter and Wolfi thought falcons were diamonds and kites were emeralds andparrots were sapphires. He thought they were pretty. He knew they were valuable.â
Lars shakes his head at me to let me know how wrong I am. âWolfi loved birds. Is what makes his death so cruel. That disgusting falcon â¦â The tears that begin to bloom in Larsâ eyes only make me angry. I canât help myself.
âLars ⦠I mean, sorry, him being the love of your life and all, but his death ⦠His death is from Greek myth. Itâs justice from the gods.â
A moment after this outburst I soften. I curse myself silently. I reach out and lay my hand over his and give it a friendly squeeze. âSorry. Youâre right. Iâm a zealot for birds. Sometimes I lose sight of, you know, people.â This German fabric designer, whose break-dancing-rabbit motif is currently beguiling the tots of Hamburg, is in possession of a treasure map I want.
How Wolfi died is a mystery to rank alongside those tales of ghost ships and lost tribes and Egyptian curses that used to fill the Boyâs Own Annual when I was a child. The facts I gathered are these: Lars, who admits keeping the financial books for their little family of two, recalls Wolfi returned from Australia, from the Western Desert, with a smuggled shipment of eggs in February 2006. In May of that year it is recorded Wolfgang Stemple, a registered bird breeder from Hamburg, sold a peregrine falcon chick to the Hamburg World Wildlife Park. The HWWPis an internationally recognised, state-registered animal research centre and asylum. Needless to say since the scandal broke that Wolfi was a bird smuggler there has been much embarrassment and finger-pointing at that facility regarding the way they procure their wildlife. The director, name of Grupp, has been suspended on half pay while an investigation is held. I like the thought of Grupp on half pay.
The nest from which Wolfi obtained the 2006 falcon eggs (there were two eggs that year, he sold the other to a Kazakhstani oil baron) had proved prolific. His records show he had already harvested fifteen eggs over eight years at an average sale price of nine thousand euros for a total revenue of one hundred and thirty-five thousand euros from that one nest in a remote location in a distant land.
In mid 2007 zoologists at the Hamburg World Wildlife Park, having banded the young peregrine falcon with their distinctive triple-crown leg band, released it into the raptor aviary, a vast dome of netting that takes an impressive bite of sky. At showtime, it haggled mid-air with buzzards, eagles, hawks and owls over euthanised gerbils that were fired into the sky from a pneumatic mortar by gloved ornithologists as the tourists wowed and oohed at the aerobatics. It endured a year of this pitiful lolly-scramble before plumbers using a backhoe tore a hole in the netting of the aviary
âBullshit. Fat frauleins in housecoats poking marshmallows through bars to pink cockatoos. Pudden-head sons of technocrats bored with Xbox who want an eagle for Christmas to toss rats at. Pole-dancers looking for a new angle who think itâd be cool if they could train a parrot to pull the bow on their bikini undone. Shopping centres using pretty birds to distract shoppers from ugly prices. CEOs who think because their company logo is a falcon itâd be a good idea to imprison a real one in the atrium of their skyscraper. I met a hotelier in Düsseldorf who ordered an egret for his fibreglass lake from your Wolfi. It was tethered there in the sparkling blue chlorinated water while kids splashed at ball games all around it.â
âYou think Wolfi didnât care for birds?â
âI think Wolfi was a treasure hunter and Wolfi thought falcons were diamonds and kites were emeralds andparrots were sapphires. He thought they were pretty. He knew they were valuable.â
Lars shakes his head at me to let me know how wrong I am. âWolfi loved birds. Is what makes his death so cruel. That disgusting falcon â¦â The tears that begin to bloom in Larsâ eyes only make me angry. I canât help myself.
âLars ⦠I mean, sorry, him being the love of your life and all, but his death ⦠His death is from Greek myth. Itâs justice from the gods.â
A moment after this outburst I soften. I curse myself silently. I reach out and lay my hand over his and give it a friendly squeeze. âSorry. Youâre right. Iâm a zealot for birds. Sometimes I lose sight of, you know, people.â This German fabric designer, whose break-dancing-rabbit motif is currently beguiling the tots of Hamburg, is in possession of a treasure map I want.
How Wolfi died is a mystery to rank alongside those tales of ghost ships and lost tribes and Egyptian curses that used to fill the Boyâs Own Annual when I was a child. The facts I gathered are these: Lars, who admits keeping the financial books for their little family of two, recalls Wolfi returned from Australia, from the Western Desert, with a smuggled shipment of eggs in February 2006. In May of that year it is recorded Wolfgang Stemple, a registered bird breeder from Hamburg, sold a peregrine falcon chick to the Hamburg World Wildlife Park. The HWWPis an internationally recognised, state-registered animal research centre and asylum. Needless to say since the scandal broke that Wolfi was a bird smuggler there has been much embarrassment and finger-pointing at that facility regarding the way they procure their wildlife. The director, name of Grupp, has been suspended on half pay while an investigation is held. I like the thought of Grupp on half pay.
The nest from which Wolfi obtained the 2006 falcon eggs (there were two eggs that year, he sold the other to a Kazakhstani oil baron) had proved prolific. His records show he had already harvested fifteen eggs over eight years at an average sale price of nine thousand euros for a total revenue of one hundred and thirty-five thousand euros from that one nest in a remote location in a distant land.
In mid 2007 zoologists at the Hamburg World Wildlife Park, having banded the young peregrine falcon with their distinctive triple-crown leg band, released it into the raptor aviary, a vast dome of netting that takes an impressive bite of sky. At showtime, it haggled mid-air with buzzards, eagles, hawks and owls over euthanised gerbils that were fired into the sky from a pneumatic mortar by gloved ornithologists as the tourists wowed and oohed at the aerobatics. It endured a year of this pitiful lolly-scramble before plumbers using a backhoe tore a hole in the netting of the aviary
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