Once upon a long Ago, there was an archipelago called Ago. It consisted of three islands; one short, and two long. This story happens on one of the latter.
It was right before the Great Protein Shortage of 1662 that I and my muscular wife Jolene sat at the breakfast table, enjoying a well-balanced meal of two crisply baked Dodo breasts, whilst sharing a bowl filled with the fluffy result of ten scrambled Dodo egg-whites.
Now when I say my wife Jolene was muscular, I am not kidding. Of course, all people were muscular prior to the Great Protein Shortage of 1662, but my wife Jolene was so muscular you could grate nutmeg on her abs and she wouldn’t even have to strain them. Which came in handy, because we ate a lot of scrambled eggs, and nutmeg was the key ingredient that made my wife Jolene’s scrambled eggs so delish.
Suddenly, she slammed her fist on the table.
“Is that absolutely necessary?”
My wife Jolene could not answer. Partly because of the shock, and partly because she was still ripping a piece of the ever chewy yet protein rich Dodo breast from her fork with her teeth. But she twisted the news pamphlet to face me, and in big all-caps letters I read:
Now I slammed my fist on the table.
“Whisszath abfowuwhtee newwwwy?”
Yes it was. This was grave news. Without ridiculous amounts of Dodo protein, our very lifestyle was at stake. Besides, as a Dutchman, and a sailor, I could not help to feel somewhat responsible. So I quickly grabbed my coat, kissed my wife on her muscular, chew-trained cheek, and set out to assemble a crew. Which didn’t take long because word of the Dodo’s extinction traveled fast.
That’s why I ordered to change the name of our ship ‘The Jolene’ to 'Word of the Dodo’s Extinction’. We arrived at the archipelago Ago the very next day.
We started scavenging upon a long Ago, where people had spotted the last Dodo. And it didn’t take too long for us to find her, but, alas, we were too late. The last Dodo had passed. Mere hours earlier. Her body still warm. However, we were in luck! When we, respectfully, lifted the big bird off her nest there we found two pristine Dodo eggs. Kept warm in their mother’s last ditch effort to save her species. I put them in my tricorne with some feathers and we swiftly made our way back to the ship.
We barely made it in time. You see, at home, word of the Dodo’s extinction had started to spread like wildfire, so when we arrived we only had seconds left to save our ship by changing its name back to 'The Jolene’.
The journey back was long and tiresome. Tiresome, mainly because I had ordered Eddie the Deckhand to hatch the eggs. Commanding him to sit perfectly still and not put his full weight on the eggs. It might seem impossible to squat inches of the floor for the duration of a sailing vessel’s ocean voyage these days, but in our century people were very muscular. And in the beginning all was fine, but Eddie had been sitting in the searing sun, so after the third day he went mad of heat stroke. Thus began his exhausting, monotonously sang song:
“Cluck-cluck-cluck, I-am-a cuck. Cluck-cluck-cluck, I-am-a cuck.”
Of course, 'cuck’, had a whole different meaning back then. It simply meant 'chick’. But by the third week I got so fed up with him just sitting there, watching us do all the work, I grabbed an oar to hit him on the head. However, before I could land the sweet silencing hit, Eddie suddenly shot upward:
Immediately, I dropped the oar and pushed Eddie aside, and there I witnessed the miracle of life. The eggshells cracked and from within them appeared two healthy Dodo chicks.
I proclaimed, voice breaking in emotion. Already doing the Jig on deck. Until I heard Bram shouting down from the crow’s nest:
"But, Captain, how do we know if they’re a boy and a girl?”
Ah, yes, I had celebrated too soon.
“Not to worry, Bram, that’s why Francis is here. See, Francis is a seasoned vet in the food processing industry. He has been making sure we get our steady supply of Dodo breasts on the table for twenty years!”
So, I beckoned Francis, and with the utmost care, he picked up the first chick. Then, he put the fragile little creature in the palm of his hand, and with his thumb squeezed the feces out of it. He attentively checked its cloaca for a small “bump”, which would indicate that the chick was a male.
Francis spoke solemnly. And promptly he tossed the little male chick in the chick shredder.
“Why the hell would you do that?!”, I cried in anguish.
“Au… automaticity”, Francis stuttered, pale faced.
With that, our journey to rescue the Dodo species had been in vain. And thus started the Great Protein Shortage of 1662. All we could do to pay respect to the last Dodo, was to drop it off at Oxford University Museum of Natural History, where it is still on display to date. Plump and big as can be. Cause during our voyage we treated the last Dodo like royalty.
Alas, it would still take years before clever minds researched the Dodo’s protein packed meat, leading up to the discovery of Whey. Far too late for us, of course. But it did not matter. We would have been too distraught to eat anyway. We were so distraught that we never checked if the last Dodo was a boy or a girl. We did not want to know.
Now, before this story ends, you might still be wondering why on earth we had brought a chick shredder on board with us.
Those are the horrors of the food processing industry.
—
23-12-2019, M.A. Tempels ©
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