The Great Dodo Comeback

by Fiona Sandiford

  “Do you think they’ll ever leave?” said Leni to Popcorn and the dodos one morning. From the tree house they saw Professor Scissorson’s leather hat lying on the chair outside hut 187.

  Suddenly, the door to the hut opened and out came Professor Scissorson herself, carrying one end of her large wicker basket. She looked more relaxed than Leni had ever seen her before.

  Leni climbed down from her tree and the moment Professor Scissorson spotted her, she shouted out, “Morning, early bird!”

  Professor Flowers emerged from his hut holding the other end of the wicker basket. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and a Panama hat. “Ah my fledgling! How are you this bright day?” he called out.

  “Hello, Professors. What are you doing?” Leni asked.

  “We took the pink pigeons back to the sanctuary yesterday and now we’re about to release Jethro’s pigeons back into the wild,” Professor Scissorson explained. “I’m giving him a hand.”

  Like a magician about to perform a dazzling trick, Professor Flowers said, “Celia, the hatch, please?”

  Professor Scissorson released the little door on the top of the wicker basket and a flurry of flapping signalled the pigeons’ freedom.

  They darted about for a while, getting their bearings, rose and fell and finally whirled together in a big flock. They looked like doves, thought Leni. It was a moment of peace.

  The birds soared through the warm currents of air, making their way inland until they got a bird’s-eye view of the Shoober estate, sprawling out beneath them.

  The smell of molasses hung heavy in the air. It had ruined everything and was still clinging to the windows, the roof, all down the front steps and most of the gardens.

  On the ground, Pawpaw and Beanbag were clearing up the sticky mess. Right now, they were scraping molasses off the statue of Shoober with trowels.

  “Nearly there,” grimaced Beanbag.

  “Done it!” declared Pawpaw with a grunt. He’d managed to scrape off the last of the gunk and stood there beaming.

  “Good as new,” sighed Beanbag, and the pair of them high-fived each other with their trowels.

  Above them, the birds flocked together and did a couple of laps around the mansion. Then in perfect formation, they soared over the statue of Shoober and released a shower of pigeon poop right on his stony head.

  Professors Flowers and Scissorson shared their news in The Quill, the specialist magazine for bird scientists. In their article, they thanked Leni for all her help. Not only that, the Mauritian president awarded her a special “Bird Brain of Mauritius” medal. Her mum and dad were as proud as peacocks.

  A few days later, the professors went to see Leni’s family.

  “We’ve really enjoyed our stay…” began Professor Flowers.

  Leni’s heart sank a little. Were they about to check out?

  “So much so, that we’d like to stay even longer,” cut in Professor Scissorson.

  “That’s lovely,” said Leni’s mum. “How long for?”

  “Three months…” said Professor Flowers.

  “…to start with,” added Professor Scissorson.

  “Wonderful! May I ask why?” queried Muppa.

  “We’ve both been given the green light to go ahead and start trialling our de-extinction techniques on endangered birds here in Mauritius,” said Professor Flowers. “And this time we’re going to work together.”

  “Yes – we’re starting with the Mauritius fody,” announced Professor Scissorson, laying her hat on the kitchen table.

  “Then we might get to work on the olive white-eye,” added Professor Flowers. “A most interesting bird.”

  “Using the science we used to de-extinct the dodo – DNA capture and genome reconstruction and so on – we may be able to help to save these species before they go extinct,” explained Professor Scissorson.

  The dodos were growing fast and loved gambolling in the sand, strutting, waddling and generally doing what dodos used to do, all over again. During school hours, Muppa would dodo-sit, and then Leni would race home from her lessons to hang out on the beach with her two new friends.

  “They’re just like I imagined them,” she said to Popcorn. “So adorable.”

  “Adorable!” he squawked. Was it just her or did he sound a bit jealous?

  She stroked his green plumage. “Don’t worry, Popcorn,” she said. “You’re still my favourite parakeet.”

  “It’s easy to carry them up and down from the tree house at the moment,” said Muppa. “But they’re getting bigger. Soon it’ll be trickier.”

  “It’s just as well their proper home will be ready in a few weeks,” replied Leni.

  The dodos had had a special territory set aside for them, in the lagoon just off the coast of the main island of Mauritius. It was a small, wild island, uninhabited by humans and fringed with mangroves. It was perfect dodo terrain. Soon they’d be ready to roam, free of predators, and free from Benny and Giavanna Shoober’s sticky hands.

  Leni was busy learning all she could about the de-extincted birds and kept practising and improving her dodo-care skills.

  “Go on, ask me anything,” she said to Muppa one afternoon.

  “Okay,” Muppa replied. “A dodo chick with its beak in a net?”

  “Settle it down and take to the vet.”

  “Fungal infection in the back of the throat?”

  “Meds in their food is the antidote.”

  “A dodo with feathers that sometimes fall out?”

  “That’s moulting and nothing to worry about.”

  “Well I must say, these dodos are in good hands,” laughed Muppa. She was in the middle of cleaning up some dodo poop from the floor of the tree house. The bottle’s label read The Splatomizer! Cleans up bird splodges, stains and smudges.

  “Marion and Mimi’s spray is amazing,” she said.

  “Amazing!” repeated Popcorn.

  Leni smiled. The cleaners had branded their formula into a special trigger-pump bottle, with a top shaped like a pigeon’s head. The formula was still a closely-guarded secret, of course, but people loved how the fruity-fragranced spray came out of the pigeon’s beak when they squeezed the trigger. Bottles and bottles rolled off the production line and supply could barely keep up with demand. Marion and Mimi were making a small fortune from The Splatomizer! – people were using it on everything from windscreens to wedding dresses.

  The two dodos pecked at some Economy Pigeon Seed from Leni’s hand. “You know, Leni, I’ve been thinking,” Muppa went on. “I have a bit of money put aside. Just a little nest egg, you know. It’s for you to have one day. It’s not a fortune, but it’ll be enough for you to build your own bird hospital.”

  “Wow, really?”

  Muppa pulled a few stray leaves out of Leni’s raven-black hair. “I’m so proud of you, Leni,” she said. “I know you’ll study hard, and once you’ve earned your wings and qualified as a vet, the money’s all yours.”

  “Thank you, Muppa! One day I’m going to build a massive tree-house hospital. And I’m going to care for all the birds in it. Just wait and see!”

  “Wait and see! Wait and see!” echoed Popcorn.

  They chirp, they sing, they call, they gobble,

  they squawk, they screech, they soar, they squabble.

  From martins to mynas, fowl to flamingos,

  I spot them out of my tree house window.

  A company of birds, the early dawn chorus,

  their eggs all oval and totally flawless.

  They flit, they flock, they coo, they warble,

  they’re fancy-free and so adorable.

  They preen, they peck, they pull and they push,

  one in the hand is worth two in the bush.

  They like eating insects or flowers or fruit,

  birds live by their wits and they don’t give a hoot.

  They can migrate for miles, birds on the wing,

  doing their own sweet birdy-like thing.

  Those dino descendants
are birds of a feather,

  they light up my world and I love them for ever.

  Some fascinating facts about our feathered friends…

  In 1865, workers who were constructing a railway line in a marshy area of Mauritius called Mare aux Songes, unearthed dozens of dodo bones. These bones were sent to museums all over the world and helped experts to reconstruct skeletons of the extinct bird.

  In the same year, 1865, Lewis Carroll’s classic story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published. It featured a fictional dodo and, as the book became popular, the extinct bird’s fame increased.

  Some of Mauritius’s bank notes feature an image of the dodo.

  Dodos stood at a height of about one metre.

  In 2016, scientists scanned a dodo’s skull and used it to check out how its brain would have looked. From what they saw, they figured that the bird would probably have had a rather good sense of smell.

  1: On which island did dodos live?

  A) Majorca

  B) Mauritius

  C) Maui

  2: To which type of bird are dodos most closely related?

  A) Emus

  B) Turkeys

  C) Pigeons

  3: True or false? “The Dodo” was a bottom-wiggling dance craze which swept across Britain in the 1870s.

  4: What’s the scientific name for the dodo?

  A) Raphus cucullatus

  B) Columba de Terra

  C) Biggus Pigeonus

  5: True or false? Pigeon parents both produce a special type of “pigeon milk” to feed their chicks.

  ANSWERS

  1:B, 2:C, 3:False, 4:A, 5:True.

  How did the dodo pass her maths test?

  She winged it.

  Why did the chicken cross the road?

  To get to the other side.

  Why did the dodo cross the road?

  To prove he was no chicken.

  What did the dodo say to her misbehaving chick?

  “You’re grounded.”

  How did the dodo know he was about to moult?

  He checked the feather forecast.

  How do dodos send birthday cards?

  By pigeon post.

  What do you call two dodos living alongside each other?

  Nest-door neighbours.

  What did the daddy dodo say to his son who was sprucing up his feathers?

  “I think that’s enough preen time for today.”

  What do dodos spray under their wings to smell fresh?

  Dododorant.

  Fiona Sandiford has written for newspapers and magazines in both the UK and Australia. She now lives in Sussex with her family. She enjoys drinking strong tea, listening to soul and disco music and stroking her dog’s ears. But perhaps her greatest love is making mischief with words. The Great Dodo Comeback is her first story for children.

  Clare Elsom is an illustrator of lots of popular children’s books. She lives in Devon where she can be found drawing dodos, paddle boarding and having adventures with her young son.

  The dodo is a famous example of an extinct animal. Although no extinct dodo has ever been brought back to life, scientists interested in de-extinction are working on ways to bring back lost species using preserved DNA.

  For links to websites where you can find out more about the dodo, de-extinction and DNA, go to usborne.com/Quicklinks and type in the title of this book. Please follow the internet safety guidelines at Usborne Quicklinks. Children should be supervised online.

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  First published in the UK in 2020 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England, usborne.com

  Text copyright © Fiona Sandiford, 2020

  The right of Fiona Sandiford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Illustrations copyright © Usborne Publishing Ltd., 2020

  Illustrations by Clare Elsom.

  The name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.

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  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  EPUB: 9781474990875 KINDLE: 9781474990882