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    Feathers: A Comedic Ornithological Melodrama
    Feathers: A Comedic Ornithological Melodrama
    Feathers: A Comedic Ornithological Melodrama
    Ebook196 pages2 hours

    Feathers: A Comedic Ornithological Melodrama

    By James Babcock

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    About this ebook

    Take a trip to the islands of the Pacific with retired professor J. Humbert Flintlock, his pilot son, his Jewish neighbor lady, and her daughter. It’s an entirely innocent project to update the professor’s famous Guide to the Birds of Oceania. But a murder and an airplane hijacking embroil them in the nefarious plot of an unscrupulous Indian businessman bent on fomenting a revolution on the island of Bali. The result: a funny comedy of errors! Plus along the way you’ll learn a lot about birds, the only animals with feathers. Lavishly illustrated online with over two hundred color photos and maps

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames Babcock
    Release dateOct 5, 2012
    ISBN9781301985739
    Feathers: A Comedic Ornithological Melodrama
    Author

    James Babcock

    Following three years in the Navy and forty years in international and domestic banking, Babcock took up a second career as a writer and composer. His plots draw on his travels abroad and experiences in foreign exchange trading, bank operations, lending, trust services, auditing, and bank management. Active in community work, he served as a university rector, symphony president, and chairman of economic development organizations. He holds degrees from Princeton and the Wharton School. In addition to his novels and short stories, his creative work includes books of humor and games and a number of pieces for violin and piano. He resides with his family in Blacksburg, Virginia.

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      Book preview

      Feathers - James Babcock

      Feathers, the Novel

      A

      comedic

      ornithological

      melodrama

      231 Illustrations

      James Babcock

      Copyright 2020 by James F. Babcock

      All rights reserved

      Smashwords Edition

      Contents

      Chapter    1

      Chapter    4

      Chapter    7

      Chapter  10

      Chapter  13

      Chapter  16

      Chapter  19

      Chapter  22

      Chapter  25

      Chapter  28

      Sources

      About the Author

      Index of Illustrations

      Books by James Babcock

      About the Illustrations

      In Feathers we are going to have fun while going on a long trip to the islands of the South Pacific. A map of the expedition is on the next page.

      Along the way we will learn about birds, lots of birds. Pictures of all of them are included in a separate gallery. The 231 color pictures in the gallery also include maps and photographs of places, planes, and a few interesting animals, and these are marked with an asterisk in the text.

          The gallery is not included in this e-book because the novel is also available as a paperback, and since the cost of producing so many photos in a paperback is prohibitive, the gallery has been made available separately as a companion e-book, Photos for Feathers, the Novel.  To acquire this e-book, in your browser enter amazon.com photos for feathers james babcock.

      An Index of all 231 illustrations, given in the order in which each item appears in the text, is provided at the end of this book.

      Birds are the only animals with feathers—colorful feathers!—as you will see in this rich collection of birds from the South Pacific.

      Chapter 1

      To a packed university auditorium, the professor of ornithology delivered his final lecture. As he reached his peroration, his rhetoric soared. And so, to conclude: Birds are the only surviving dinosaurs. Birds are oviparous. Birds have hollow bones. Birds have feathers, gorgeous feathers. They build houses. They sing! They fly!.... In sum, who cannot be utterly fascinated by ornithology—the study of birds!

      The professor turned off the last of his colorful slides and laid down his laser pointer. The audience erupted in applause. Every student rose spontaneously and clapped and hooted and stamped their feet.

      It was the professor’s standard closing for his last lecture in a popular undergraduate course. It was also the exclamation point at the end of a distinguished forty-five year career in ornithology. The standing ovation recognized an esteemed scientist and a beloved teacher.

      Professor J. Humbert Flintlock had given his last lecture at New York University.* He was retiring. Now, he assumed―erroneously as it would turn out―that his life was going to flow in a slower, quieter channel.

      He left the lecture hall and returned to his office. There he packed a final box of trinkets. He would miss this cozy retreat lined with shelves of books and filled with bird nests, photographs of bygone expeditions, and a framed display of exotic feathers. He would even miss his battered old desk piled with a cluttered but quixotically ordered mass of papers. And he would miss providing the gentle letdown he used with students who sought to talk him out of their low grades—opening his brown jar of ginger cookies.

      He supervised the loading of a van with his boxes of memorabilia and joined the student driver in the front seat for the trip to his East Side apartment building. With the help of the young man, he toted the boxes into the elevator and up to his bachelor apartment. The cartons having been stacked neatly in his den, the professor tipped the student generously, washed up, and prepared his solitary supper.

      Dr. J. Humbert Flintlock, Eminent Professor of Ornithology and noted collector of feathers, was a man of many names. Jonathan to his mother. Humbert to his great aunt Sarah. Bertie to his father. Stocky to the fifth-grade bullies. Bert to his girlfriend in college. Flintlock to his sergeant. J.H. to his dean. Dad to his son. But the name he cherished most was ornithologist.

      It was his great aunt Sarah who had introduced him to the pleasures of birding by giving him a nest in which nestled a single blue robin’s egg. A childhood in the Adirondack Mountains among the forests and lakes had inured him to outdoor life and the pleasures of observing nature.

      He had not greatly enjoyed his two years in the Army, but it had further toughened him for life in the wilds and the work that was the hallmark of his subsequent career—field study of the courtship and nesting habits of the birds of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Flintlock was that rarity among academic liberals and social scientists who actually spent time outdoors.

      His university course, Biology 601. Field Observation of American Birds¬―known to the students as Bird Pics―was the easiest undergraduate offering in the Biology Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at New York University. It vied in popularity with another equally famous gut over in the liberal arts curriculum: Music 108. History of Opera.

      Flintlock was a conservationist. He worried about endangered species. Among the presidents, he admired Teddy Roosevelt most for having initiated the creation of the national parks. He also admired Richard Nixon―even though Nixon unlike T.R. was more of a golfer than an outdoorsman―because he created the Environmental Protection Agency. Cynics of course declared that the EPA was just another of the president’s tricks, merely a cynical move to lock in the tree-hugger and birder vote for the GOP. But Flintlock valued the EPA’s good works.

      The walls of Flintlock’s bachelor apartment, like his office, were lined with bookshelves loaded with Audubon Society reports, stacks of the weekly solicitations from the World Wildlife Federation, and his autographed copy of the Endangered Species Act. A carton in the closet held extra copies of his own Guide to the Island Birds of Oceania.

      It had been hard enough being a widower for the past five years. But now, in retirement, he would also no longer have the company of his university colleagues. No more symposia, no more lunchroom banter, no more faculty teas. And, sadly, no more students. He expected life to go on, but at a more quiet, lonely pace.

      However, ten thousand miles away, on the other side of the globe, a skein of events that would alter that expectation was already being wound. Or to use Flintlock’s sense of ‘skein,’ sinister events were being launched like a flight of wild birds.

      Back to Contents

      Chapter 2

      Flintlock answered a knock at his apartment door. A dark-haired woman of about his age smiled. Hello, she said, I’m your new neighbor across the hall. Sorry to bother you. My daughter’s coming to see my new digs, so I’m making brownies. But I’m out of sugar. She raised her eyebrows.

      Oh, by all means, Flintlock answered. I’ll give you some. Come in.

      As the woman entered the apartment, a raucous voice called, Hello! Hello!

      Good heavens! the woman exclaimed. What’s that?

      That’s Candace, my pet macaw. Come, I’ll show you.

      They moved from the foyer into the living room.

      A giant parrot! the woman exclaimed.

      "Yes. She’s an Ara ararauna, the Blue-and-yellow Macaw."*

      She’s gorgeous! All those colorful feathers. And such a big beak and feet!

      You may have noticed that her first and fourth toes point backwards. That means she’s zygodactyl, like all true parrots.

      No kidding. Does she eat a lot?

      Flintlock laughed. All the fruit and nuts she can get her beak on.

      I bet she keeps your wife busy cleaning out that cage.

      Oh, that’s my job. I lost my wife five years ago.

      Oh, my sorry. What a coincidence. You’re a widower. I’m a widow. She introduced herself. I’m Lillian Cohen. Like I said, I just moved in across the hall.

      I didn’t notice, he replied honestly. His was a mind not very curious about neighbors and neighborhood.

      Lillian explained that she was a new widow, now broke. I used to have money, but my husband lost it in the big crash of 2008. She sighed. Last month he just waded out into the ocean.

      Oh, I’m so sorry! What did he do?

      Plastics.

      Manufacturing?

      No. Junk. He collected everybody’s plastic garbage, melted it down, and resold the pellets to manufacturers.

      Well, I’m sorry to hear of your loss.

      Thank you. You know, I can tell I’m going to be lonely. You could come over for supper one night.

      That’s very kind of you.

      Just let me know when. I’ll bake a carrot cake or something.

      I’ll do that, Flintlock promised.

      Well, it was nice to meet you, Mrs. Cohen replied.

      Don’t forget the sugar.

      Oh, yeah, the sugar. That’s why I came over, wasn’t it? Thanks.

      He fetched his can of sugar and handed it to her. Just bring it back when you feel like it.

      Back to Contents

      Chapter 3

      It had been the professor’s practice to rise early every Saturday morning and at 5:00 a.m. meet a small group of bundled-up students in Central Park for a morning of field study. Central Park was renowned among birders as a key resting locale for migrating birds using the eastern flyway from Canada to South America.

      For these visits to Central Park and other birding sites around the metropolis, Flintlock traded his bow tie and tweed suit for a tan windbreaker and battered hat, his binoculars, a water bottle and baggie with ginger cookies, and a blank life list. He didn’t need a field guide, of course, having authored one himself. It was that sort of book whose general utility generated a surprising volume of annual sales that ensured the professor a pleasant supplement to his university pension. His other principal publication, Guide to the Island Birds of Oceania, did not generate much in the way of royalties but it had assured his eminence in academia.

      This Saturday morning he chose to make a solitary ramble not in Central Park but in Pelham Bay Park, in the northeast Bronx.

      New York City’s largest park, Pelham Bay Park* is three times larger than Central Park. Professor Flintlock liked the birding there because of the variety of habitats—woods, meadows, marsh, shorelines—including prime locations to view one of nature's most skillful hunters, the Osprey.*

      He took the IRT Pelham Park line to its last stop and caught a bus to the Park entrance. He hiked to the far north end. He strode down the paved pathway beside the tennis courts and entry to the beach, then sheared off to his left into the woods on Hunter Island.* There he hid in the forest next to a meadow and a shoreline shared with Twin Island where the margin between the different habitats was most likely to draw birds.

      He waited patiently. From his hiding place in the bushes, he scanned the shoreline with his binoculars, and then peered at the line of trees above it. Presently, the scattering of a group of Crows from the treetops announced an intrusion on the bridle path below.

      The professor lowered his binoculars and observed a disconcerting scene. He focused his binoculars for a sharper view. Not more than thirty yards away, where the bridle path ran beside a paved walkway, a man on horseback was talking with a man straddling a motor scooter. The horseman waved his arms and shrugged. The man on the scooter raised what appeared to be a straw and puffed his cheeks. The horseman toppled to the ground. The assailant sped off on his scooter down the paved walk.

      Flintlock hurried around the waterway and ran up the path to the man on the ground.  He knelt beside him.  He could see no wound, but the man was in agony. He struggled to breathe as he stared up at the professor. His hand slowly fell open. Flintlock saw that it had clutched a feathered dart. As the man’s eyes glazed, he muttered two words: Kali. Bali.

      Flintlock felt the man’s neck for a pulse. There was none. The man was dead! Flintlock unseated his cell phone and dialed 911. 

      A two-man medical team from the park police arrived within minutes. They ran up the path. One pulled a gurney, the other carried a black bag. The latter knelt beside the body, made a quick examination, and shook his head. Massive heart attack.

      The other medic leaned down to pick up the feathered dart.

      I’d be careful with that, Flintlock said, it must be poisoned. That’s what killed him.

      Both men stared up at the professor.

      He quickly explained. I was bird watching. I saw the whole thing, from over there.  He pointed across to the bushes. A man came up on a motor scooter. They talked. Then the man on the scooter blew this dart and this man fell off his horse.

      Jeez, a murder! the man with the gurney said. Don’t touch nothing.

      The other man opened his cell phone and dialed. Murphy? O’Brien here. We got a 187. Yeah, in the Park. Twin Island. Up the walk about a hundred yards. The victim’s already expired. We’ll wait.

      He turned to Flintlock. You’ll need to wait, too. They’ll want your statement.

      The professor sighed. 

      The rider’s horse waited patiently on the bridle path. Flintlock went to it, took the bridle, and stroked the horse’s nose.

      Back to Contents

      Chapter 4

      A professorial man of settled habits, Humbert promptly forgot his promise to set a date for supper at Mrs. Cohen’s apartment. A week passed.

      She knocked rather than rang. Good morning, professor. I brought Candace a banana.

      How thoughtful. Will you come in?

      No thanks. I’m on my way to the grocery. Can I get you anything?

      What a nice idea, Mrs. Cohen. Come in and let me see what my pantry needs.

      She handed him the banana, which he took to his macaw’s cage.

      Candace, he said, our nice new neighbor lady brought you a present.

      Hello! Hello! Candace replied.

      Mrs. Cohen followed Flintlock to his kitchen. She sat at the kitchen table with her shopping list in hand while he examined the meager

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