Let’s take Pierpont, the entomologist. After months of daily contact, he succeeded in quieting first the suspicion then, second stage, winning the trust of a colony of damselflies more commonly called dragonflies and more vulgarly still damselflies, they allowed him to play with them, go on their excursions, in exchange at first for a few sweets, then without anything in return, in friendship, in brotherhood, an adopted damselfly integrated into the group arousing neither fear nor curiosity, only the desire of the females in spring. The fear that gripped him at the beginning of the experience — he confessed it without false shame as soon as he recovered the use of words, after several weeks of reeducation, before a gathering that was taken aback to see the scrawny attendee try to scale his carafe — soon made room for a feeling of security, shocking when one knew the native nastiness and the strength of these animals. He could turn his back on them without fright. In the end, he slept without his weapon. Baruglio had followed the opposite initiative, no less rich in discoveries. Rather than going to live among the reptiles (he had no desire to drag his family with him), the celebrated herpetologist raised one in his home, like a son, having scrupulously recreated its Madagascar habitat in a cupboard. Could one imagine better conditions for the study of an animal? Its every gesture and deed, its daily routine, nothing escapes the observer who dwells on the grounds in these places, rises at dawn to exchange bittersweet words with his mate, drinks some coffee, reads the papers, answers the mail, lunches at noon, half-past, drinks a cognac, shuts himself in his laboratory until evening — where he is not to be disturbed under any circumstances — dines at the stroke of seven, half-past, steps out onto the balcony, contemplates street and sky, dispassionately flips through professional journals, swallows a sleeping pill, kisses his companion on the forehead, and falls asleep on his belly — yes, it is odd, almost systematically on the forehead and on his belly. The information made the rounds of the building, people came down from upstairs to watch Baruglio handle his reptile. All the same, certain neighbors complained, necessitating the immediate elimination of the creature. She seemed so sweet, inoffensive even, but how could one say what a wild animal would do in captivity? One way or another reptiles eventually escape into the sewers, it’s common knowledge. A petition circulated. Baruglio put an end to the experiment, and got rid of his blue radiata tortoise.
These two eminent zoologists responded to Algernon’s call. But let’s not forget professor Zeigler, polyglottal ornithologist able to imitate beyond reproach the calls or wheezes of some sixty birds, who could, thanks to his gift of the gab, marry an ostrich, however much he hesitated to do so. Finally Cambrelin, the ichthyologist, was sent by Sadarnac. This one claims whenever he gets a chance to have harpooned Palafox in the middle of the wide Sargasso Sea, after having missed him once in the Floridian Straits. A lie. Specialists not without other interests, Pierpont, Zeigler, Baruglio, and Cambrelin do not know all there is to know about wild animals, batrachians, rodents, mollusks, ruminants, primates, or seafood. Algernon entrusted them with Palafox. The four men made a circle around the glass cage where the exposed animal finally remained calm. Zeiger examined his eyes, his nostrils, his crest, Cambrelin his right side, Baruglio his rump, Pierpont his left hand, turn please, Pierpont his eyes, his groin, his goatee, Zeigler his right arm, Cambrelin his stinger, Baruglio his left wing, turn please, Baruglio his eyes, his beak, his antennae, Pierpont his right fin, Zeigler his flat, trowel-like tail, Cambrelin his left side, please turn, Cambrelin examines his eyes, his wattles, his horns, Baruglio his right gill, Pierpont his rectrices, Zeigler his left arm, they look at each other, yes, they would do well to dissect Palafox. They decide against it. Certain organisms do not tolerate well being cut into pieces, their hearts beat anxiously when handed around, and the effects of such shock to the nervous system tend to have unpredictable results, one example alone, there is nothing harder in all the world than to get a quartered thoroughbred to gallop. We content ourselves, then, with a few dermatological samples, some muscle, a bit of blood, bone and cartilage, which shouldn’t prevent the well-trained Palafox from carrying its jockey on to victory.
The arrangement satisfied everyone, after which everything went to hell. Pierpont and Zeigler begin to quarrel, brothers however, and with shared experiences — ah! these drinking orgies — who had stuck together when fireless winters encroached upon womanless springs, when you would’ve swallowed your own brain if you could to fill your belly, before either had tasted glory or had tossed to the public (beaten, standing, unleashed) the wolf at the door and the ears of a mad cow. Their friendship came to an end the day when the unforgivable ornithologist forgot the entomologist’s precious collection of coleopteran beetles in the aviary, in particular the weevil, the Capricorn beetle, the carob, and the june bug, thus the sapphire faded, the ruby, the topaz and emerald, all these gems fading, their value evaporating, soon to be gravel. The dispute is about Palafox’s nervous system. Pierpont refuses to use sulfuric acid, even in the interests of pacific experimental ends. Zeiger, on the contrary, swears by the benefits of the process, very popular with frogs, which allows for immediate observations, reproducible at will, thanks to which schoolchildren learn to develop their reflexes and respond intelligently to stimuli. Let’s admit that nothing could be funnier. A few drops of acid induce a string of irresistible visual gags, we might even believe we’ve been transported back to the golden age of silent film: the frog tears itself free of the cork board upon which it was resting, lazily, pinned, decorative, jumping like it possessed magic beans or the winning number or the solution to all the world’s problems, upending the contents of the laboratory, leaping into the middle of the retorts, devoting itself without believing in them to chemical experiments, alchemical, obtaining white precipitates, black precipitates, buttressing itself against the tip of the Bunsen burner, it melts lead, cinnabar, at whim, sipping bubbly alcohols, drawing liquid out of gold and from eau regale, inhaling the mix, obtaining this time a thick red smoke, a laugh-inducing tear gas, leaving no one indifferent — its number is up when it implodes, happily we have plenty of others, a whole crate.
Whereas Palafox is a rare specimen in our experience, Pierpont counters, perhaps the last, perhaps the first. Let’s not make another move, let’s watch it gather pollen, distill caterpillars, and weave its web and soon we will know everything about it. You see, with this sort of trunk linked to his digestive tube, how he pumps the nectar from flowers. On his rear paws, there, there, come closer, that there, we see miniscule balls of propolys, resin gathered on buds, which will allow him to caulk the cracks in his habitat, reinforce the attachment of these strips of wax, and to stickily ensnare the aphids he eats from time to time. Look at the progress we are making. These first observations are interesting actually, admitted Cambrelin, but, that said, let’s be reasonable. Think of all the errors made in the past in the classification of living things. We had first thought the whale a fish, for example, in those days when men were trusting and naïve. Today, we presume they belong to the same group as our own, dear Maureen, that of mammals, but a researcher more in the know, and better equipped as well, let it be said, perhaps will tomorrow discover that in reality it is a passerine, however heavy, a pretty sparrow. So let’s not go crazy here.
There are nearly two thousand species of snake, Baruglio announced abruptly. If Palafox seems at first not to resemble in any way an asp, that does not necessarily mean that despite everything it isn’t one, as we have seen many a screech owl that resembles an owl (raised eyebrow of our ornithologist duly noted). It was night, Baruglio insisted. That excuses nothing, hissed the ornithologist who will never forgive his brother for having forgotten an anaconda in his aviary, noting the bird of paradise, the lyrebird, the hornbill, the toucan, all these high-end parakeets bred in limited numbers by nature to distract the explorer, compensated for his efforts as a tsetse fly kisses his cheek. Having taken the floor (let him keep it) Zeiger wonders where Palafox nested before he had a cage at his disposal. The egg had only been a stage. In light of recent events and of the manner in which the animal, without having even been invited to sit down, had appropriated the sofa (even a repo man would have avoided eating it on the spot), he must have benefited parasitically from existing structures. In all likelihood, he would dislodge an enfeebled goldcrest and take residence in his nest. The brood collapses overboard, the birds, still weighed down with their eggish reflexes, slow to adapt to the soil — their cardboard skulls strike the corner of a violet, and the only witness to their death is a succulent slug. Palafox settles down, makes himself at home, his head beneath strangely endivelike wings, with no other means of escape from his sad destiny than to dream, he falls asleep. As for the slug, slugs are not famous for their spirit of initiative, Palafox the next day found it there, prepared in its own juice, served warm upon a mint leaf. This hypothesis, for want of being seductive, seemed the most likely. However, upon reflection, Zeiger put it aside, as a man accustomed to marching straight ahead no matter the reeds or rushes, and so it was precisely there in a swamp that he believed he could locate the true habitat of our palmiped. Palafox, therefore, widened and deepened a hole dug by a musk otter, built up the opening with mud, yes, with mud, where would he have procured the bones of a nun?