The Curse of the Labrador Duck
Page 29
1. Until 1872, the AMNH had an adult male from the collection of D. G. Elliot. That specimen is now in the Smithsonian in Washington. I had examined that specimen a few days before.
2. From October 17, 1921, to July 27, 1965, the AMNH had an adult male on permanent loan from Vassar College. It had been in the collection of Jacob P. Giraud, first mounted by taxidermist John G. Bell in 1867, and later remounted by George Nelson in 1921. I had examined that specimen at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto some years before.
3. In 1931, D. L. Sandford of the AMNH managed to sweet-talk the Boston Society of Natural History out of an immature male Labrador Duck, which he immediately shipped off to the Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt in exchange for a female Bonin Islands Grosbeak, also extinct. I had examined the duck specimen the year before in Frankfurt. While at the AMNH I also got a look at the grosbeak. I wish that I could say she was pretty; she was dull brown everywhere, with an outsized beak and head that only a mother could love.
Now on to the Labrador Duck specimens still found at the AMNH. The first four are study skins, locked safely away in the museum’s vaults.
4. An immature male, catalogue number 45802, was collected off Long Island around 1865, and purchased in NYC’s Fulton Market by George N. Lawrence. The AMNH acquired it in 1887.
5. An adult male, catalogue number 45803, also from the collection of Lawrence, was acquired by the AMNH at the same time as the previous duck. It was collected off Long Island ca. 1842 and passed through the hands of taxidermist John G. Bell.
6. Another adult male, catalogue number 734023, shot at La Prairie, Quebec, in the spring of 1862, was purchased by William Dutcher from a Mr. Thompson for $125. Walter Rothschild, whom we have already met, purchased the duck from Dutcher, and then sold it to the AMNH.
7. An adult female, catalogue number 734024, was probably collected from the waters around Long Island. It was sold by John G. Bell to Dr. Henry F. Aten, who then passed it on to Gordon Plumber of Boston, who sent it to Walter Rothschild, who sold it to the AMNH.
The remaining specimens are taxidermic mounts, which grace the diorama in the museum’s Chapman Hall of North American Birds.
8. An adult male, catalogue number 3738, was collected off Long Island around 1862. D. G. Elliot obtained it from Brooklyn taxidermist John Akhurst, and eventually passed it along to the AMNH.
9. Another adult male, catalogue number 3739, came from the collection of German naturalist Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. The legs of this specimen were replaced by New York taxidermist John G. Bell.
10 and 11. An adult female, catalogue number 3740, and an immature male, catalogue number 3741, were both collected off Long Island, and passed from John G. Bell to D. G. Elliot, and then on to the AMNH.
12. A female, catalogue number 45801, collected off Long Island around 1842, and sold by John G. Bell to George N. Lawrence, was acquired by the AMNH in 1887.
“Aha!” I hear you say. “Those numbers don’t add up.” I told you that there were eight Labrador Ducks at the AMNH, but have listed four study skins and five taxidermic mounts. That is because one of the ducks on public display had been stolen. Mary LeCroy of the AMNH filled me in on what was known of the theft. About thirty years ago, outside contractors were in the museum to install pipes in the ceiling in the area behind the bird dioramas. The contents of all of these displays are very difficult to get to—a large, awkward pane of glass must be removed from the front of each. The exception was the Labrador Duck display, which had an access panel in the back. Regrettably, that panel had been left unlocked. It seems that one of the workers, or a visitor to the museum who spotted an unlocked door, spied the access panel, reached in, and strolled off with the duck closest to the back, one of the two adult males mentioned above. It has never been recovered, so the display today contains just four Labrador Ducks instead of five. In Mary’s estimation, the thief probably didn’t realize the value of what he or she had snatched. That duck may still be on someone’s mantelpiece, just waiting to be spotted by a clever bird enthusiast.
JANE AND I had agreed to meet in a bar we had spotted close to the hotel. I was in a fabulous mood, having snagged 15 percent of the world’s population of Labrador Ducks in a single day, so I got a head start on Jane, slugging back a Bass Pale Ale. Only then did I realize that I had missed lunch, which probably explained why the sight of the bottom of my beer glass left me feeling loopy.
Jane arrived, and we both tipped back a Groundhog Cider or Woodchuck Cider or something like that. I told her about my success and she filled me in on the impressive array of things she had seen and done that day while I sat at a desk in a windowless room. For Jane it had been a whirlwind of the finest art galleries, headiest coffee shops, and most peculiar museums. We ordered another round of something alcoholic; Jane said that it was Golden Monkey beer, but she may have been teasing. The glass was blurry, but its contents were cold and wet, and so we toasted our success at being wonderful human beings in a wonderful world. At one point, Jane asked what I was thinking, as I appeared to be staring blankly into space. I explained that I was trying to remember enough of my college physics to work out the engineering of our barmaid’s brassiere; it really was a stunning piece of work. I must have been getting as blurry as my glass, because Jane politely suggested that food in my stomach would be a good idea.
She firmly took my arm and suggested Vietnamese food. At this point I probably would have agreed to filet of Stonehenge. Claiming that I couldn’t read Vietnamese, I had Jane order for both of us. I sorta remember drinking Vietnamese beer, but it may have been Budweiser. As we sat and chatted, we contemplated my latest profound insight into the human condition. It seemed to me, at least at the time, that every adventurous soul should attempt to spend a year living in each of New York City, London, Paris, Mexico City, and Tokyo.
THE NEXT MORNING found me in my running togs in Central Park. At 6:30 the park had more runners than a seniors’ complex has liver spots. Almost all of them were running through the park counterclockwise, so I ran clockwise. I wasn’t suffering a headache. Honestly.
By lucky coincidence, the New-York Historical Society museum, just next door to the Natural History Museum on Central Park West, was showcasing an exhibition entitled Audubon’s Aviary. With really no idea what to expect, I was delighted to find three dozen of Audubon’s paintings on display. These were not images sliced out of his double elephant folio of North American birds, but the actual originals. To me the best of the lot was the painting of the Carolina Parakeet, not because it represented an extinct bird, but because the portrait had been executed so well. Completed in watercolor, pencil, pastel, ink, and gouache, they served as the basis for the engravings for Audubon’s most noted published works. Some paintings had motion detectors nearby, so that an approaching viewer would set off a broadcast of the bird’s song or call. Also on display were assorted ephemera, including Audubon’s gun, field hat, paint palette, and writing slope. One of the society’s volumes of the double elephant folio was open to the page featuring the Great Blue Heron, rendered life-size. A highlight for me was a painting of Audubon by his son John Woodhouse Audubon. This was the son who had accompanied John Senior to Labrador, and had reportedly found Labrador Duck nests on the hillside that Lisa and I had visited five years before. John Junior must have used some tricky pigments, because as I changed my position, small points of light twinkled off his father’s face and hair.
I asked a guard if the society had other Audubon originals. My head swam with thoughts of seeing the great man’s original Labrador Duck painting. Her response was, “Yup.” When I stood waiting for elaboration, she went on something of a tirade. “Everyone wants to see the Audubons. They don’t wanna see nothin’ else. We got other stuff, but it’s always, ‘Where’s the Audubons?’ They walk in, they look at the Audubons, and then they leave. They were supposed to be done by now, but everyone wants to see them.” Not really a big fan of Audubon, I suppose.
It was abundantly clear that Jane wasn’t keen to leave New York. It seemed to be her kind of town, celebrating everything that she held dear. If Jane were to announce that she was moving to New York, I would be surprised not one bit.
I AM A big fan of Mark Twain. I have read all of his major works and quite a few of his lesser pieces. One of Twain’s entirely less satisfying later novels is Tom Sawyer Abroad, almost certainly written to help keep up with the mortgage payments. In it, Tom, Huckleberry Finn, and ex-slave Jim travel the world in a hot-air balloon. Part way through their journey Tom and Jim have an argument about metaphors. Tom tries to illustrate a point by making reference to the adage “birds of a feather flocks together.” Jim, being a little more literal, believes that he has caught Tom out, explaining that bluebirds and blue jays are never found together, despite similarities of plumage. Huck, siding with Jim, knows that the argument has come to an end “because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together. You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that’s the way to find out about birds. That’s the way people does that writes books about birds, and loves them so that they’ll go hungry and tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. Their name is ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer myself, because I always loved birds and creatures.”
I had always assumed Mark Twain had lived his life in Missouri and Mississippi. However, the people of Elmira, New York, are proud to point out that their fair city played a big role in Twain’s life. Given the theme of my journey, it isn’t surprising that there is also an important connection between Elmira and Labrador Ducks.
The short version of the story goes that the very last Labrador Duck, an immature male, was shot in the waters around Long Island in 1875; its body resides at the Smithsonian. Less than ninety years after it was first described, that was that for the poor Labrador Duck. More or less. Perhaps. The longer version of the story is more compelling, but considerably less reliable. In 1879, the journal American Naturalist published a three-sentence report by W. H. Gregg. Elmira’s pharmacist and health officer, Gregg explained that a Labrador Duck had been shot in the town on December 12, 1878, but offered no further details.
Further details were provided in a paper published thirteen years later. According to Dr. Gregg’s recollections, the Labrador Duck had been shot by “a lad” when the Chemung River had overflowed its banks as the result of a winter storm. Before Gregg could get to it, the duck had been eaten, and nothing remained but the head and a bit of the neck. Gregg held on to this artifact for years, but it was subsequently lost. A good story, but without a scrap of corroborating evidence.
And it all seems so terribly unlikely. The Labrador Duck was a seabird, and Elmira is more than 185 miles from the ocean. It’s more than 60 miles from both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, the closest bodies of water big enough that a confused duck might have mistaken them for an ocean. Even so, I was spurred on, ready to take Jane on a 400-mile side trip, by the fact that the American Ornithologists’ Union recognizes the Elmira record as possibly legitimate, giving 1878 as the end of the road for the Labrador Duck.
Pulling our rented car into Elmira, our first stop was 333 E. Water Street, where Gregg operated his pharmacy. The drugstore wasn’t there anymore, of course, having been run over by the thoroughly modern Elmira Savings Bank building. However, just down the street is the Riverwalk Café (Open for Business) and Personnel Images (empty, but Open for Offers to Lease). A stone above the door indicated that the building had been erected in 1842. Not satisfied with the job, a different stone told us that it had been erected again in 1869. Either way, the building had been in place when Gregg had taken time out of his Christmas preparations to write about the Labrador Duck discovery.
It is one thing to visit a town and see where things used to be, but quite another to visit a town and see where things still are. So we crossed a bridge spanning the naughty Chemung River, which flooded so horribly in 1878 and in whose overflow the last ever Labrador Duck had reputedly been shot. The river was very well behaved on the day Jane and I visited, staying well within the enormous concrete walls that had been constructed to contain it.
The good people at the Chemung Valley History Museum were able to fill me in on some important aspects of Mark Twain’s life. Not only did Twain spend a good portion of his life in Elmira, he married a local girl, Olivia Langdon. According to the museum, Twain wrote all of his best works in Elmira, including Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (my favorite, 1889), and Huckleberry Finn (1892). Twain shuffled off this mortal coil in 1910 in Reading, Connecticut, but his remains were carted back to Elmira for burial.
The museum houses Twain’s chaise longue, his portable writing table, and his wife’s wedding gown. It also has the author’s typewriter, and somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I remembered reading that Tom Sawyer was the first novel ever to be composed on a typewriter. Then it occurred to me that Twain may have known Gregg. They may have even chatted about the Labrador Duck while Twain waited to have a prescription filled.
Jane set off for an hour’s search of fun things to do in Elmira, while I got on with a long-anticipated appointment. A couple of months earlier, I had written to the mayor of Elmira, Stephen Hughes. According to the city’s website, Hughes had been born and raised in Elmira. He and his wife, Linda, had been married seventeen years and had three children. Hughes had been elected councilman just seven years after graduating from Southside High School, and served five terms in that capacity before being elected mayor. He apparently enjoys golfing, and can be counted on to show up to see his daughter at cheerleading events. Judging by his photograph, he has a nice haircut and looks good in a dark suit. Just the sort of person who might want to chat about extinct ducks. Hughes had written back, saying that he would be pleased to meet with me.
A sign on the building at 317 E. Church Street indicated that it houses Elmira’s police department, its city courts, and the city offices. When I asked for the mayor’s office, a police officer gave me a slightly disgusted look, and said, “Upstairs.” Odd sort of behavior for a civil servant. On the second floor, I found a uniformed guard and asked where I would find the mayor’s office.
“Well, it’s upstairs, but I don’t think he’s there.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “My appointment isn’t until two o’clock.”
“Yeah? Well, that may be, but I don’t think he’s coming back. He resigned this morning.” I responded with a slack jaw. “Yup,” he continued. “About three hours ago.”
Good God. How little did this guy want to speak to me that he was willing to quit his job? All right—I’ll bite. “Why?” It seems that the mayor had sought to top off his salary with a second job. Unfortunately, this new non-major job would put him into a potential conflict of interest situation over the dispensation of funds. The only sensible option, apparently, was to toss in his job as mayor. And to stand me up.
I walked up to the third floor anyway, i
f only because I suddenly found myself a bit shell-shocked and without anything else to do for an hour. Coming down the stairs was a friendly, if harried, looking gentleman with his arms full of paperwork. He was sporting a very worn yellow baseball cap and a turquoise sweater with the sleeves pushed up. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked. I explained about my appointment with the mayor and my long journey to keep it.
Terry McLaughlin deserves extra credit as a good and decent human being. As Deputy Mayor of the City of Elmira, he had probably been up to his armpits in messy meetings and interviews since sunrise. He could easily have said, “Look, we’re having a kind of rough day here, so if you don’t mind, I’m going home.” He didn’t. Instead, he invited me to join him in his office for a chat about Elmira and dead ducks. McLaughlin sat behind his desk and offered me the facing chair. He explained that he had served the people of Elmira for ten years as Councilman and eight years as Deputy Mayor. I got down to asking him the questions that I had prepared for Mayor Hughes.
I got the expected answer when I asked if McLaughlin had heard of the Labrador Duck. “But I do have two Labrador retrievers!” He got half marks for that answer. Asked if hunting was popular in the area, he said that people hunted white-tail deer and black bear, and that fishing was very big, with special emphasis on trout, bass, walleye, and tiger muskies. Terry was particularly fond of hunting in the Adirondacks, where he “shoots black powder.” Probably a lot safer than trying to shoot bears.
I asked what the citizens of Elmira were most proud of. He thought for a minute, and offered up, “A small-city atmosphere, with a connection to the past.” The streets of Elmira are safe, and the people very neighborly. The winters are generally mild, the surrounding hills beautiful, and there are plenty of recreational opportunities. You can still buy a four-bedroom house in Elmira for under $80,000. Whatever might be said about Elmira, McLaughlin claimed that “no challenge is too large that we cannot overcome it,” which seems just about the right attitude for a politician.