The Curse of the Labrador Duck

by Glen Chilton

  Labrador Duck 53

  An adult drake at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, it is one of the few specimens on public display.

  I found the duck to be a very pleasant-looking adult male, standing on an unmarked white wooden kidney-shaped platform, normally held to the backdrop by a metal L-bracket. His left side faces out toward visitors. His bill, legs, and feet had all been painted over in yellow, orange, and black, but I was getting rather accustomed to that. Whatever tags might have once adorned his legs had been discarded. If I screwed up my eyes, he seemed to be leaning forward ever so slightly, as though about to take flight. Not taking flight when he had the chance is probably what got him into the display cabinet.

  THE DAY HAD left me beat. I dragged my duck-detection kit back to the hotel to wait for Jane to complete her day of touring. When she arrived, I admitted that if we didn’t get going right away, I would probably crash and be lost to her for the night. After a pizza, we decided to spend the remainder of our last night in America back in the “English pub” close to the university. Not quite so crowded as the night before, it still had about 250 patrons. But for four of them at a table in the corner, I was the oldest person in the bar. I got the first round of drinks in to celebrate a very successful duck quest. Jane grabbed us a bit of table space and introduced herself to two attractive young ladies seated there. When I arrived, Jane introduced me as her friend “Greg.” I reintroduced myself as Jane’s friend “Glen.” Honestly! You put a couple of pretty faces in front of some people, and they go all to pieces. The ladies were in the first year of university, studying Spanish, a program which they expected to finish in five years. I asked what one did with a degree in Spanish. “Teach Spanish,” they said in unison. I was relieved that they hadn’t asked me what one did with a degree in ornithology. I might have had to tell them the truth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Beano Goes to Russia

  For a child in Britain, the most familiar comic book isn’t Fantastic Four, Archie, or Batman. Instead, it’s The Beano, and has been since 1938. Short on storyline but long on puns and characters playing naughty pranks, Roger the Dodger, Minnie the Minx, Dennis the Menace, and other chums with the middle name “the” have been encouraging young readers for the better part of seven decades. As a youngster in Canada, my family managed to find me the occasional copy of The Beano, possibly to promote a sense of my British Heritage.

  A few years back, The Beano decided to get its young readers more involved in the comic by publishing their photographs, jokes, and drawings. The single best way to ensure that your picture appears on the Reader’s Corner page is to have Mom or Dad snap a photo of you reading the comic while standing in front of some notable foreign monument, like the Sydney Harbour Bridge or Reactor 4 at Chernobyl. Darned and determined to get my photo in The Beano, when Lisa and I were ready to dash off to Russia to see my second last Labrador Duck, I made sure that I had a recent issue stashed in my luggage.

  By all rights, St. Petersburg should be absolutely swarming with tourists. For those with a sense of culture, St. Petersburg offers more than three dozen museums, including the Bread Museum, the Artillery Museum, the Toy Museum, and the Museum of Hygiene. The more adventurous visitor from abroad need never feel homesick with bars and nightclubs like Saigon, Manhattan, Liverpool, Havana Club, Hollywood Nites, and Mollie’s Irish Bar. The exchange rate of yen to roubles is a steal. All Sunday newspaper travel supplements have advertisements for package tours to Moscow and St. Petersburg, although none seem to feature ads for travel to sunny Novosibirsk or perky Yekaterinburg. People should be keen to travel to Russia if only because, until recently, it was almost impossible to do so—the place cries out for tourists.

  But then comes the strange bit. Even at the height of the tourist season, Lisa and I found foreign visitors to be pretty scarce, and I think I know why. Most countries seem ever so keen to earn some extra cash by encouraging visitors from abroad. Yet, while America claims to be fighting a war on terrorism, Russia would appear to be fighting a war on tourism. In most countries, one need only show up with a credit card or some cash, a valid passport, and no more than a modest criminal record in order to be ushered in with open arms. Not so Russia. A visa must be applied for, specifying exact dates for arrival and departure. Don’t even think about enjoying your stay enough to want to extend it a day or two.

  After our passports had doubled in weight from all of the new glue-ons and staple-ins, the paperwork still continued on the flight from London’s Heathrow to St. Petersburg. We were instructed to complete a registration card to get in, a registration card to get out, a customs declaration to get in, and a customs declaration to get out. The forms asked all the typical stupid questions, and a few more besides: “Are you carrying a gun? Are you importing a car? Are you exporting a car? Are you reexporting a car? Are you a descendant of the last czar intent on reestablishing imperial Russia through a bloody coup?” We wouldn’t dare forget to register with the Visa Registration Department within three days of our arrival, unless we wanted a nasty surprise. Finally, we were not to pay the cab fare in anything other than roubles, even if roubles were the last currency our cabdriver wanted.

  Our cabdriver, Ivan, looked as though he had, until recently, been a hockey player waiting for his big break into the National Hockey League. He sported broad shoulders, chiseled good looks, and a broken nose. His cab sported an air freshener with a picture of a naked woman and a tiger; neither seemed to be enjoying themselves. St. Petersburg can boast a little more than 4 million residents, making it more populous than Berlin or Los Angeles but slightly smaller than Calcutta or Wuhan. St. Petersburg has built out rather than up, and Ivan swept us 9 miles through the city’s sprawling south end to our hotel. He had to wait in the lobby until we could trade in some dollars for roubles to pay the fare.

  Our hotel was one of the big ones, with nearly 1,000 rooms, but it all looked a bit tattered. While registering, we were told that the tap water was perfectly safe for brushing our teeth, but that we weren’t to swallow any of it. Having seen a bathtub full of it, I can see why—its hue was somewhere between Danube Canal green and dog wash brown.

  St. Petersburg is a long way from anywhere. Except Helsinki, which is just 188 miles away. Since we hadn’t flown in from Finland, Lisa and I were dragging our tails after a long day of travel. Dropping off our bags and grabbing a bite at the hotel seemed like the best option. I ordered a vegetarian pizza and a German beer; there was no Russian alcohol on offer. Lisa was a little more adventurous, ordering a Brokkele Paste off the English menu. Her meal had a remarkable resemblance to broccoli pasta.

  Rejuvenated by the food, we found enough zip for a short walk along the Fontanka River. The canal-side avenue was quite choked with couples smoking, drinking, and snogging in almost equal measures. The waterway was choked with tour boats, although the boats were not choked with tourists. Despite the late hour, the sun was a long way off the horizon. By good fortune, we had arrived in late June. St. Petersburg is sufficiently far from the equator that at that time of year, the sky remained illuminated around the clock.

  Looking back at our hotel, we had no trouble spotting our room; it was the only one with its window open. Odd, we thought. As we tried to drop off to sleep, it became apparent why all the other windows had been closed. Built on a big, fetid swamp, St. Petersburg is ideal breeding habitat for mosquitoes, and most of the year’s bumper crop had found their way into our room. Every ten minutes, we had to get out of bed, turn on the lights, and try to swat the new pulse of mosquitoes that had snuck out from behind the curtains. This game of nude mosquito-bashing continued until about 2 a.m. Not that we had killed them all by then, we were just too tired to care anymore.

  VIENNA IS OLD, Paris is antique, and London is practically fossilized. By comparison to other European centers, St. Petersburg is a bouncing baby boy. A slip of a lad himself, Peter became czar of Russia in 1682 at ten years of age. Peter wasn’t particularly keen on th
e city of Moscow, possibly the result of having watched the bloody murder of his family there. Hence, he sailed down the Neva River to the Baltic Sea and set up shop in 1703. It can hardly have evaded Peter’s notice that the area he had chosen for his new city was a great stinking, mosquito-infested swamp. Swamps don’t make good building sites, and at least 40,000 people died trying to get the whole thing to stand up. Even so, by the time Peter died, in 1725, St. Petersburg was home to 40,000 residents. Strange numerical coincidence, there.

  Peter the Great is credited with a pretty hefty range of rascally behaviors, including subordination of the church, subjugation of the peasantry, and the execution of anyone who ticked him off. It was also kind of sneaky to name his new city after a saint who shared his name. But whatever else Peter might have been accused of, you have to give him bonus points for his position on equality of the sexes. Initially, it might seem a bit extreme that William Mons was executed for sleeping with Peter’s wife, Catherine, and that his pickled head was put in Catherine’s bedchambers as a reminder. However, seeing both sides of the coin, Peter had his own lover, Mary Hamilton, executed and pickled as well. Peter’s motto was apparently “I am one of those who are taught, and seek those who will teach me.”

  Despite the popular image of Russia as the new center of capitalism and everything nasty that goes with it, organized-crime bosses in Russia have bigger concerns than fleecing tourists. In St. Petersburg, tourists have less to fear from the mafia than being robbed and/ or beaten up by thugs dressed as police officers. How comforting. Indeed, there are really only six important threats to tourists to St. Petersburg:

  Maniacal drivers have no respect for pedestrians. It is said that the majority of drivers do not have liability insurance—or brake pads.

  St. Petersburg pickpockets display a remarkable level of industry. Curiously, German tourists are particularly frequently targeted. The police telephone hotline for foreigners is 278-30-18.

  Missing manhole covers are an ongoing problem. I can’t claim that we saw more than two dozen gaping manholes and managed to avoid every one.

  Every guidebook warns of Romany beggars, while claiming not to be bigoted toward any particular ethnic group. Begging can quickly turn to flagrant theft when women work with children trained to rifle through pockets.

  The drinking water is contaminated by heavy metals, bacteria, and a nasty intestinal parasite called Giardia lamblia. Having suffered through giardiasis in Canada, you can trust me—you don’t want this one. Unless vomiting and explosive diarrhea are a priority for you.

  The final great tourist problem is a national toilet paper shortage. The last two problems may be related. Carrying a small satchel of toilet paper is said to be the best way to go.

  THE ZOOLOGICAL INSTITUTE was not scheduled to open until 11:00, which gave us time for a bit of a lie-in and a leisurely stroll along the Fontanka River and the Voznesenskiy Prospekt. This neighborhood isn’t the core of the tourist map, but lies well within its southern limits. The community had the sense of loving neglect—a place where people get on with their lives. Nowhere were the buildings crying out for repair, but everything was in need of a good scrub. We passed workers removing pink and purple graffiti from a pillar, but no one was working on the general grime with a brush and bucket of soapy water.

  After crossing a couple of canals, our aimless wandering brought us to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, one of the biggest churches in the world. The engineers responsible for St. Isaac’s should get big kudos for managing to erect it on swampland. Its gold dome is a great navigational landmark, visible for miles. Ironically, during the Soviet era, St. Isaac’s was converted into a museum in celebration of atheism. Since my second-most-important task in St. Petersburg was to get my photograph published in The Beano, I brought out my camera and asked Lisa to snap a quick one of me holding up the comic with St. Isaac’s in the background. I tried to look impish.

  Passing through the park surrounding the Admiralty, we got our first look at the magnificent Neva River where it divides into the Bolshaya (Great) Neva and Malaya (Small) Neva. Crossing the river at Dvortsovy Most, the Palace Bridge, we arrived on Vasilevskiy Island, which Peter had intended to be the focal part of his new city. There were some initial problems with frequent flooding and lack of reliable river crossings, but Vasilevskiy Island did eventually catch up with the rest of the city.

  We sat to gather our thoughts in the park across from the Naval Museum. Lisa noticed that the residents of St. Petersburg are not shy about making eye contact, but also not in a big hurry to return a smile. We were later told that this reluctance is a holdover from the Cold War era, when it was not at all clear who were your friends and who was likely to turn you over to the authorities.

  In essence, the city’s zoological collection was established by Peter the Great, just ten years after he established St. Petersburg. The Zoological Institute, formally inaugurated in 1832, consists of some 15 million specimens of 280,000 different animal species. According to the institution’s website, 40,000 of these specimens are on exhibition in the public galleries. Putting many Western facilities to shame, the institute’s library has more than 500,000 books and journals. The website also provides a delicious quote about St. Petersburg’s Zoological Institute that seems an equal mixture of pride and propaganda. “Solidarity, devotion to their work, and enthusiasm characterize the staff of the Zoological Institute. These number approximately 500 people. As a rule, scientists and technicians work at the Institute for many years. For many of them, the Institute is their only work place during their lifetimes.”

  The magic appointment hour arrived and we walked to the entrance of the Zoological Museum and Institute. From the entrance-way, it didn’t seem sufficiently posh, and we wondered if we might be in the wrong place. For such a grand institution, the cubbyhole of an entrance seemed better suited for a junior high school in a small prairie town. As we entered we passed a group of students, no doubt about to get a tour, composed of fourteen bored-looking sixteen-year-old fellows, and one really excited-looking, estrogen-fueled sixteen-year-old girl. After they cleared the foyer, I called Dr. Vladimir Loskot on the first rotary telephone I had seen in about thirty years.

  Loskot, Leading Research Fellow and Head of the Department of Ornithology at the institute, looked to be somewhere in his early sixties. This may be entirely unfair—ornithologists generally look quite a bit older than they are, having endured the ravages of sun and wind in the pursuit of birds. Loskot explained that his previous thirty years had been spent at the Zoological Institute. He led us through a level of public displays, through a security door, and into the troglodyte world of the institute’s research collection. Underfoot, the concrete floor was crumbling in places and excavated in others, with some of the more dangerous bits covered with metal sheets. We passed a small mountain of rusting radiators that had been ripped out awaiting replacement, hopefully before winter set in. We spied a slightly smaller hillock of fluorescent tubes. Whether new or burned out, they were covered with a layer of dust thick enough to be called soil. Indeed, the whole tunnel system was dusty enough to support its own ecosystem. We passed a cleaning lady who, in the ultimate act of futility, was trying to clear away some of the dirt with a small brush. Loskot called the elevator. It was one of those remarkable optical illusions—much smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside. With the three of us inside, there was enough air to fill only one pair of lungs, so we had to breathe in turns. In broken English, Loskot used one of his breaths to explain that we should avoid touching the elevator’s walls as they were probably dirty.

  Lisa and I settled into a workbench near a window, surrounded by storage cabinets that reached from the floor to the ceiling high above. These cabinets contained one of the world’s great ornithological collections. It can boast about 170,000 skins of 4,200 bird species. It also has 2,700 skeletons of 1,080 species, 850 species represented by 7,500 alcohol specimens, and a jumbo collection of nests and eggs.


  Labrador Duck 54

  St. Petersburg’s Labrador Duck, a drake, was something of an oddity. Although it was a long, skinny study skin rather than a taxidermic mount, it had light brown glass eyes. I suspect that this specimen started its life-after-death experience as a taxidermist’s creation and for economy of space was later converted into a study skin. A really nice job had been done of it, and the specimen retained a touch of the artistic. There are some small pinholes in the webs between the toes, which suggests to me that it was pinned to a display board sometime in the past. It resides in a cardboard box, ornately decorated with the beautiful paper often found on the inside covers of precious old books. Between examinations, the Labrador Duck shares its box with an extinct Heath Hen.

  When I first contacted Loskot ten years earlier, he explained that his duck had come to Russia from the Hamburg dealer G. A. Salmin sometime between 1830 and 1840, but the rest of its history is lost to the mists of time. For a spell after World War II, the hen from Dresden via Königstein joined the drake, but you have already read that story. When Paul Hahn constructed his book on extinct North American birds, he had been able to gather a lot less information on this specimen, perhaps because he was working under the restrictions of the Cold War. When his book on extinct birds came out in 1963, he was able to write only: “UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS: 24. Musej Zoologicheskogo Instituta Akademii, Leningrad. Male adult.”