The Great Dodo Comeback

by Fiona Sandiford

  Then she lowered her voice. “Between you and me,” she said, “I think anything Professor Flowers has created has been more accidental than deliberate.”

  “Like the barn owl?” said Leni.

  “Yes,” said Professor Scissorson. “It was quite a feat but I don’t know how he managed it. Honestly, I don’t think he has much of an idea what he’s doing.”

  “Maybe he’d appreciate a bit of help,” suggested Leni.

  “Perhaps. Or maybe he’d be better off leaving it to me. I would have thought he’d prefer to relax in a deckchair with his paper instead of chasing around after dodo bones.”

  “But he’s so enthusiastic,” began Leni. “And he has years of experience…”

  “Hmm,” considered Professor Scissorson. “Sure, he’s had some successes. People were wowed by his barn owl clone – the Twit Two. But my cloned kookaburra was just as impressive. The original was a male and I created a genetic copy. They called it the Kooka-brother.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Leni, “Professor Flowers told me about it.”

  “But he stole my thunder,” said Professor Scissorson, unable to hide her bitterness. She started popping some bubble wrap in frustration.

  Leni peered out of the window towards Professor Flowers’s hut. There he was on the front deck, bending down slowly to pick up his parcel.

  “This time, though, it will be different,” vowed Professor Scissorson. She unzipped a large bag and Leni saw her pull out a white plastic coverall. “I need to wear this protective suit. And these,” she added, waving a pair of blue rubber lab gloves.

  “Why? Is dodo DNA dangerous?” asked Leni.

  “Not to us. It’s actually humans who are dangerous to the DNA,” said the professor. “I wear this so I don’t taint the dodo DNA with my own.”

  Next, she brought out a large helmet. “You can’t be too careful,” she said, polishing the visor with a special wipe from a tub.

  “So, now you’ve got all your gear, what’s next?” asked Leni.

  “Next up,” replied Professor Scissorson, flexing her hands, “is finding some parents for our dodo-to-be.”

  Before breakfast the next morning, Leni and Popcorn went to see what was new with the professors. The sounds of banging and sawing greeted them as they drew closer to the huts.

  The source of the noise was Professor Flowers. He was holding a hammer and banging nails one by one into a rickety wooden storage unit. The about-to-be-hammered nails were pinched between his lips, which made it difficult for Leni to work out what he was saying.

  “’Erro, m’ fludgling,” he greeted her.

  “Pardon?” said Leni.

  “Pardon?” chorused Popcorn.

  Professor Flowers spat the nails into his palm. “Hello, my fledgling!” He laughed. “Just making a loft for my pigeons.”

  “Oh, right,” she replied.

  “I’m cobbling it together from some old broken bookcases and storage units,” he explained.

  “Where did you get them?”

  “I was taking a stroll and came across a man loading the old bookshelves into the back of a van, ready to take to the tip,” said the professor. “I told him I’d be happy to give them a new home. So he brought them here for me instead! What a stroke of luck, eh?”

  Leni wondered about that. The loft did look pretty rickety, but at least the professor had a positive attitude to recycling.

  He was breaking into a sweat from the effort. “I just need to make a few finishing touches and my pigeon hotel will be ready,” he beamed. After some more hammering, Professor Flowers tested it to see if it would stand up on its own in the sand. It did – but only just. It looked like it might topple over at any moment.

  “Now I just need some residents,” said the professor. He pulled out a bag of grain from his pocket. “It shouldn’t take long to attract some with this,” he said. “This stuff is like gold dust. It never fails.”

  Leni looked at the label. It read “Economy Pigeon Seed”.

  “They’ll be here before you can say ‘Nelson’s Column’,” he assured her.

  Professor Flowers sprinkled some of the seed mix on the ground. Sure enough, it didn’t take long for a flock of pigeons to fly down and start pecking away. A couple of the bolder ones sat on his shoulders and one even perched on top of his head.

  “Oi, cheeky chap!” laughed the old man, his wispy eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

  “Now,” he continued, trying to move the bird off his head, “I’m going to show you something. How to tell the males and females apart.”

  “Okay,” replied Leni.

  “The main thing to remember is that the males act in a specific way,” said Professor Flowers. He proceeded to puff out his chest, waggle his elbows and strut around in a circle. “Like this.”

  Leni laughed.

  “Males strut about, they like to show off,” he explained. “But females don’t.”

  Popcorn was keeping his distance – in fact he’d flown off to the tree house. But someone else was just arriving. Leni heard the unmistakable sound of Professor Scissorson’s jeep approaching.

  The professor slowed down and parked in front of her hut. In the back of her vehicle she was carrying what looked like a large wicker picnic hamper. Inside the hamper, something was moving, noticed Leni. Something, or some things.

  “Hi, Professor Scissorson,” said Leni brightly. “Have you been looking for pigeons too?”

  “I have indeed, and I think I’ve got something pretty special,” said Professor Scissorson, climbing out and glancing at Professor Flowers’s collection of birds. “I’ve managed to get some pink pigeons. On loan.”

  The Australian professor opened the little trapdoor at the top to allow Leni a peek at the birds. She had seen pink pigeons occasionally in the wild but, up close, she could see that they were exquisite. They looked like elegant doves, with bright pink beaks, soft brown wings, pale greyish-pink breasts and rust-coloured tail feathers. Leni counted eight.

  “They’re beauties, aren’t they?” whispered Professor Scissorson.

  “Yes, and they’re really rare,” said Leni. “Where did you get them?”

  “From a sanctuary on the north of the island,” she replied. “But I’ve only got them for a limited time.”

  “Do you have both males and females?” asked Leni.

  “Yes, four of each,” she said confidently. “I’ve DNA-tested their feathers. It’s the only way to know for certain.” And with that she snapped shut the trapdoor and turned to Professor Flowers, who was wiping some pigeon poop off his sleeve with his hanky.

  “Good luck with your…flock, Professor Flowers,” she said a little rigidly. She grabbed her basket firmly by the handles and dragged it off the back of her jeep. “Light as a feather,” she grimaced. In fact, it looked bulky and burdensome. But she was too proud to ask for help.

  “My word!” muttered Professor Flowers. “This stuff is hard to get off.”

  “Come on,” said Leni, feeling a bit sorry for the old man. “I’ll help you get the new pigeon loft in place.”

  She helped him carry the DIY construction into his hut and after some pushing and shoving, it was in place. But it wasn’t going to stand up on its own.

  “It’s okay,” said the professor, undeterred. He held the wobbling structure and looked around. “Could you grab me some of those, please?” he added, indicating a pile of magazines.

  Leni did as he asked and passed him several issues of a publication called The Quill.

  The professor wedged them under the pigeon loft to prop it up.

  “Splendid,” he said, pleased with their efforts. “A five-star pigeon hotel.”

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door. “Delivery for Professor Sours!” called out a woman’s voice.

  “Flowers, actually,” called out the professor, without looking round.

  “Yes,” came the woman’s voice. “Flowers for Professor Sours. Where would you like them?”

&nb
sp; The professor turned round. “Good gracious, what’s this?” he exclaimed. The delivery woman was holding a huge bouquet.

  “Er, thank you,” he muttered, taking the massive bunch from her. “I’ve no idea who sent them,” he said to Leni, baffled.

  “Is there a note?” Leni asked.

  Professor Flowers put down the bouquet and opened the small envelope that came with it.

  “It just says, ‘Keep up the good work’!” he said. “But it’s unsigned. That’s strange…”

  Leni and the professor stared at the flowers and then at each other. And then, at the same time, they both thought the same thought.

  “Noooooo,” gasped the professor, recoiling at the idea. “They couldn’t be from her…could they?” His eyes were as wide as an owl’s.

  “What on earth? Has the woman gone stark staring bonkers?” he spluttered.

  And then his eyes narrowed. “One thing’s for certain, Leni,” he said. “I’m no pushover. If she is trying to apologize for her snooty behaviour and make friends, it won’t work. Oh no!”

  Had Professor Scissorson had second thoughts about their rivalry and realized they would be better off working together? If the flowers were from her, it was quite a sweet peace offering, Leni reckoned. It would mean she’d put her pride aside, and that took guts.

  But what Leni and Professor Flowers didn’t know was that the flowers were nothing to do with Professor Scissorson at all. They’d actually been sent by Shoober’s men, Pawpaw and Beanbag. And what’s more, at that very moment, the pair were just a few metres away, watching their every move.

  Crouched in a makeshift jungle hideout nearby, the beady-eyed duo were wearing camouflage combat trousers and helmets. With their binoculars, they could have passed for a couple of birdwatchers. Only these birdwatchers were looking for a bird that hadn’t been spotted for over three hundred years.

  “The flowers have just arrived,” whispered Pawpaw, looking through his binoculars.

  “Let me see,” said Beanbag. He brought his own binoculars up to eye level and stared ahead.

  “Can’t see anything,” he said.

  Pawpaw sighed in exasperation.

  “Nope, not a thing,” Beanbag went on. “It’s gone totally black. Has there been an eclipse?”

  “Take the lens caps off!” Pawpaw finally snapped.

  “Oh, silly me!” said Beanbag. He removed the covers. “That’s better.” The men could see much of what the professors did through the slats of their shutters, which they hardly ever closed fully. Now Beanbag saw the bouquet that had just arrived at hut 187.

  “Gorgeous flowers,” cooed Beanbag. “Aaaah, pink roses, stunning birds of paradise and lovely lilies. How sweet. My mother adores lilies. Why did you send them? Is it his birthday?” Beanbag lowered his binoculars and looked at Pawpaw.

  “No, you dimwit!” said his comrade. “Don’t you remember? I told you before. I’ve bugged the flowers with a listening device. Now, let’s see if it’s working.”

  Pawpaw picked up a pair of headphones and put them on. Slowly a smile spread across his face.

  “Ye-e-e-s,” he said, pleased with himself. “I can hear everything.”

  “Go on, put yours on,” he instructed Beanbag.

  His partner did as he was told. Sure enough, the tiny listening bug hidden inside the blooms was working and they could hear conversation inside the hut as clear as a bell.

  “I don’t know who she thinks she is,” they heard Professor Flowers tut.

  Through the shutter slats they could make out that he was putting the stems in a vacuum flask, in pride of place on his lab bench.

  Curiosity was getting the better of Leni. “I’m going next door to see her,” she said, nodding towards Professor Scissorson’s hut.

  Professor Flowers looked uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Don’t mention the flowers to her,” he said. “Okay?”

  “Okay!” echoed Popcorn.

  The neighbouring hut’s door was slightly ajar, and as soon as she popped her head round it, Leni was stunned to see that Professor Scissorson had received an identical bunch of flowers.

  “Pah, he’s not going to win me over with these,” Leni overheard her saying while she arranged them carefully in a large vase.

  “Wow, Professor, they’re amazing. Who are they from?” asked Leni.

  Professor Scissorson jumped. “Oh Leni, it’s you! You startled me,” she said. “The flowers? I’ve no idea who sent them. The note just says ‘Keep up the good work’.”

  “Keep up the good work!” shrieked Popcorn.

  The professor looked stonily at Leni. “So, what, is this his idea of a joke? Or does he think he can just send me flowers and I’ll forget how rude he’s been?”

  This was strange. Same flowers. Same anonymous note. They obviously hadn’t sent each other these bouquets. But if not, who had sent them? Leni wondered.

  “They are beautiful,” Professor Scissorson admitted, smelling the roses. “Don’t even think of telling him I said that,” she added quickly.

  Meanwhile, not far away, Beanbag shifted in his seat. It was cramped in the little hideout. “Are we going to spend the night here?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” replied Pawpaw. “We’ll do it in shifts. One sleeps while the other keeps watch. Right?”

  “Okay. I wish I’d known, that’s all,” said Beanbag.

  “Why?” asked Pawpaw.

  Beanbag yawned. “I’d have brought my pyjamas and teddy bear.”

  A din of whirring and squawking woke Pawpaw at dawn the next day.

  He stretched his arms in the jungle hideout, almost poking Beanbag in the eye.

  “Oi, careful!” said his partner crossly.

  “Morning, Beanbag. Anything to report?” asked Pawpaw. His eyelids were still half glued together.

  “Not much,” replied Beanbag, yawning. He’d spent the past half-hour staring at a spider, swaying in its web. He hadn’t been paying attention to the professors’ huts at all.

  “What do you mean, not much?” said Pawpaw, wiping the sleep from his eyes and peering through the undergrowth. “They’re making a racket. And look, there’s smoke coming out of his place!”

  Pawpaw put on his headphones, grabbed his binoculars and pointed them towards Professor Flowers’s hut.

  Peering through the slats, Pawpaw could see the smoke was billowing from a large stainless steel box. “Infernal flamingos!” he heard the professor shout. He was tapping the machine with his fist in frustration. “What’s wrong with this thing?”

  The smoke obscured his view, so Pawpaw switched a fader on a little black box from left to right to tune into the bugging device hidden in Professor Scissorson’s flowers. Then he moved his binoculars across to hut 603.

  Through the shutter slats, he could just about make out a white-suited figure, wearing a helmet and holding a drill in a blue-gloved hand. It was Professor Scissorson. She was hard at work drilling into a bone.

  “Any sign of a dodo?” asked Beanbag nervously.

  “Nah. Not yet,” sighed Pawpaw.

  “Oh. Well we haven’t missed anything, then,” said Beanbag, relieved.

  The two men sat there as the tropical birds sang, the clouds flitted by and the waves rolled in and out like a never-ending hokey-cokey.

  “That’s better,” said Professsor Flowers to Leni later that morning. He’d made some tweaks and managed to fix the gene machine. “It’s what I use to roast the DNA, and release it from the proteins which bind it,” he said in triumph. To Leni, it looked suspiciously like it might have once been a super-sized deep fat fryer, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Hang on, who’s this?” Beanbag said suddenly, noticing a white golf buggy pull up outside the huts.

  “Oh, just the cleaning ladies,” said Pawpaw. He returned to clipping his toenails.

  Outside hut 187, two ladies had stopped in their housekeeping buggy. They wore starched white uniforms and box-fresh trainers.

  “
Hello, Mimi and Marion!” cried out Leni.

  “Hello there, Leni,” trilled the ladies together. “Lovely morning!”

  The two women visited every day and helped to keep the huts spick and span. Marion was the bigger of the two, and had previously worked as a nightclub bouncer and a security guard. She had piercing brown eyes, straight white teeth and wore her hair in a huge bun on top of her head. Mimi was shorter, with a gummy grin and a high-pitched voice. They took no nonsense, but had hearts of gold and often sang in loud, warbling voices as they worked. Both the professors were impressed by their amazing ability to clean up bird poop with their own special home-made formula, which they carried around with them in a spray bottle.

  In hut 187, Professor Flowers showed them the splat on his shirt from the day before.

  “One of the side effects of my job, unfortunately,” he grumbled. “Bird poop gets everywhere.”

  “We’ll have that out in no time,” said Marion, examining the unsightly splodge. “No problem at all. Mimi?”

  The professor looked at Mimi. “Fire away,” he said, holding out the shirt.

  “Bye bye, bird poop!” called Mimi, and she sprayed a couple of shots of the solution onto it. There was a smell of citrus fruit in the air and, as if by magic, the stain vanished.

  “There you go, completely gone!” cheered Mimi.

  The professor was impressed. “It’s amazing. You’ve come up with a miracle formula there,” he said. “Thank goodness for whatever-you-call-it. Does it have a name?”

  “We haven’t thought of one yet,” admitted Marion.

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. If I wasn’t a scientist, I’d say it was magic. What’s in it?”

  “That’s top secret,” said Mimi. “All natural ingredients, of course. But as for the details – sorry, I can’t tell you.”

  That evening, Leni ate dinner with her parents as usual, but the atmosphere was unusually quiet. Tense, even.

  “Leni, aren’t those professors getting a bit carried away?” said her mum finally.