Introduction – Draft One
i.
This book represents the compilation of over a decade’s worth of field work in relation to the migration of the oxtail swallow. These fabled and intelligent creatures are well renowned for their sudden appearance in the Welsh countryside in mid-April. They remain in this (presumably Northern) roost until their abrupt disappearance three days before the first rain of autumn. So reliable are these patterns that the oxtail has been a staple in Welsh folklore dating as far back as 1103, when the first written account of the birds describes them as “as hydrophobic as a rabid squirrel.” More picturesque, the second earliest depiction of the birds comes in the form of a painting in the latter half of the 12th century, showing a young girl tossing out a bucket of water while two distinctly oxtail swallows soar away in the opposite direction.
And yet, despite this folklore, this bastion of unscientific observation, the oxtail swallow’s migratory proclivities remained largely ignored by the scientific pedagogy. The wellspring remained untapped, as it were. Until that is, I completed my dissertation at Oxford and became a fully-fledged (pardon the pun) doctor of ornithology. I was still happily engaged to Amelia back then, and she told me that I looked rather dapper in my suit, and rather like a professor myself with its leather elbows. I threatened to change when she said that and made it halfway to our bedroom before she chased me down and pinned me to the bed. She gripped the two halves of my suit together until I relented (crossed out)
ii.
The oxtail swallow is well known to mate for life. In captivity (a terrible shame, severed from their instinctual migratory patterns) widowed birds will die soon after its mate passes on. Unlike humans, who have access to brandy. But I digress. Or perhaps I will digress further. Who’s going to stop me? Amelia darling? Do you mind if I do on a tangent for a moment? No? I’ve had a bottle and a half of Cognac, to be specific. As scientists must be.
(My apologies dear reader, but what else is a rough draft for.)
I traveled the Welsh countryside for ten years, every summer and spring, locating nesting sites for the oxtail, affixing tracking devices to as many birds as I could catch, documenting where they ventured during the day, what they did, retroactively attempting to deduce patterns in their behavior the weeks, days, hours before their final flight. But they eluded me. Every time the swallows took off for their winter locales, the ones to which I pinned tracking devices remained behind. Fixed in place until death like a butterfly in a shadow box. And die they did, slowly augmenting my collection. I befriended the taxidermist in town; eventually I learned the techniques myself. Yearly, I attached trackers to dozens and dozens of birds, careful not to ruffle any precious feathers, not to disturb any potentially necessary radar hidden beneath their skin. I tied devices to their necks, their feet, their legs, their backs, their heads, their tails. I used paint alone, merely to mark the same birds year after year; I attempted sonar, photography, and electromagnetism. Nothing. Swallows fell at my doorstep, piled and dead, dropping from the sky like a blitzkrieg above my backyard. I swept them up at first, sent a few to the local taxidermist and threw the rest away. By the second year, the pile had grown in tandem with my ambition. By the third, the pattern had revealed itself. I could no longer stomach disposing of the birds. I took as many as I dared to the shop, and the rest came home to the freezer. Eventually, I spent early winters in Wales as well, learning to sew, unstuffing pillows, stockpiling scalpels, marble corneas, and mounting stands until my office was too full to access, the living room smelled like formaldehyde, and the freezer overflowed. And never could I find a way to track the oxtail swallow.
iii.
The oxtail swallow is large for its class, with a body roughly the size of a man’s forearm. True to its namesake, the bird’s tail resembles an ox’s, long, bald, and thin with a tuft of feathers at the end so downy they could belong to a duster. Its children are ugly things: fingerlike and wrinkled with tails like a mouse. Which, speaking of, have been marvelous companions to me since Amelia left. They’ve positively cornered me in this echoing house. I left my office a few days ago and stepped right on a mouse trap. I would have sliced off my toe if it hadn’t been sprung already. All I do these days is empty traps. It’s the birds: the taxidermy attracts them. The formaldehyde smell didn’t last, not once I got better at preserving them, and now the mice have returned. They were never here when Amelia was around. She would have told me if she spent her days scraping mouse entrails into the garbage disposal. I’m sure she would have told me.
It's the birds here. The birds that never should have been here. They should have been migrating to God knows where. Why couldn’t I follow them
iv.
I’m writing this from my office. I have them stacked like masonry. I counted last night. All of them. I have 356 adults and 4 chicks. I only attempted to tag the hatchlings once, and I couldn’t bring myself to take them to the shop in town. They were the first I taxidermized myself. I think, from a taxidermy perspective, they were a good beginner’s project. Bald from youth and without their flight feathers (they must have been carried to my doorstep, they couldn’t have flown alone) they made an easy task to skin and reassemble. To peel and reform. Watching their wrinkled delicate bodies elongate, abstract, and then become solid once again, I could have worked for hours. I could see how everything functioned, how the pistons and hammers, their keels and hinges, pulled everything forward. Towards where? I didn’t know. I just know I was immersed. And it was the first time Amelia didn’t say ‘I love you’ before bed. I remember that too. That was five years in.
Cognac and taxidermy make natural bedfellows, wouldn’t you agree?
The next five years would have proven nearly as fruitless as the first if I hadn’t thought to buy a camper. I didn’t bother working April through August. Amelia worried as she was apt to do by this point, but I had a plan. I bought a camper and I filled it with petrol and granola bars and exactly one bottle of brandy: to celebrate. In September, I stopped sleeping. I set an alarm, and every hour on the hour, I ran outside to see if the birdhouses were still occupied. The rains were late that year; for four weeks I slept with one eye open. I slept continuously throughout the day in 55-minute increments. I ate little and dreamed less. But, on Sept 31, at 01:32, they took flight.
I blew out a tire ten minutes out of the driveway and lost them.
The next year, I drove two hours before I was pulled over. In truth, the police chased me for forty minutes before Amelia called and demanded I stop.
The next year, I lost them over the sound.
The next year, I bought a boat.
That seventh year was the closest I ever came. They were toying with me. But regardless, the information to come later in this book was gleaned largely from that seventh year of chasing the birds on the ground. I learned they were nocturnal during their migrations, explaining why they were previously thought to be unique to Wales, and that they crossed the sound, meaning they aren’t.
When I returned home, berating myself for how foolish I’d been to not realize I’d need a boat, I learned Amelia had flown to England. Without dead swallows to taxidermy, I followed her. We were happy that winter, but she never summered in Wales again.
Cognac and taxidermy make natural bedfellows, wouldn’t you agree? It would be a shame to have one without the other.
It’s getting late and the house is empty outside of the hum—the drone-like crunching—of gorging mice. The 356 pairs of marble eyes. Some turned towards me, some presented and displayed, some just piled in the corner like laundry, like corpses. The smell of feathers is heavy in the air. There is a musk to them, a dust-like perfume of something once a part of something alive. I’ve dissected every bird here, every one, and never did I see how they died. It was like they turned off a switch. They lived out the summers in Wales and when it was time to leave, they chose not to. They came to me instead, and then they died. They dropped dead. Dropped out of the sky. On my doorstep.
v.
Dear reader thank you for asking! I have had a bottle today! It’s truly an excellent vintage this one, again thank you for the consideration. Would you like some? All the company I have these days are mice and dead swallows but you, a distinguished Oxford girl, you can appreciate a fine ’57 Cognac. It pairs well with a scholarly account of the most elusive bird in ornithology. Well well, you really mean it Amelia? Well, have some more, I insist.
Cognac and taxidermy make natural bedfellows, wouldn’t you agree? It would be a shame to have one without the other. Too bad it’s December now, and the birds are off who knows where, but I’m sure we can make do with the materials we have on hand.
I have a base here. It is long, ovular, wrinkled, and pale. It’s almost too much like skin; it would make you wary. I have a box of eyes in the study, glass marbles that can be attached and give the illusion of life. Or, of being once alive. I’ve never had to create that illusion before, how interesting. I passed a pile of the birds on my way out and they turned their necks to look at me. I think they approve of this project, Amelia, I think they like me giving a piece of myself to them. Perhaps now they will let me track them. Perhaps now I will be able to see where they go when it rains.
The base I used is a finger, Amelia, I have no secrets from you. It wasn’t on purpose. I think it was a mouse trap, I put my hand down while I was doing the dishes and it stole it from me. But its ok, really, its ok. I like it better this way. I think—I’m documenting this because I think it’s what I have to do. I think I’ll be able to find them now.
I’ve sewn on the eyes, and I walked around the house until I found another mouse trap and I carefully—so carefully in the way these last ten years have educated me—severed its tail and spliced it onto my creation. The resemblance is uncanny. It’s uncanny Amelia, I think I’ve joined them in some way. Some soulful connection deeper than flesh and pumping blood, deeper than death. It’s post death, it’s a second life we’re sharing. The hatchling I made is in the pile by the door, no presentation more prestigious than any other. I’m not worth any more than any one of these birds. That’s what I’m trying to tell them, Amelia. It’s important. They have memory, loyalty, they mate for life. I wanted to tell them that even though I didn’t, even though my mating lasted only ten years, I’m one of them, I understand them. You see why that’s important Amelia? You see that, don’t you?
My mating would only last ten years. They knew that.
vi.
I don’t know if I should have done it, but I made more. I made four more hatchlings. I just couldn’t stop. And I want to make a fledgling next, which will be a fascinating challenge. But you understand why I made them don’t you Amelia? Feathers will be required for the juvenile, but I have plenty on hand. One from here and one from there won’t be noticed, and we’ll be coming together to make something, we’ll be birthing something half of each of us. No one can say I didn’t give myself willingly and wholly then, can they? I made five hatchlings. One is in the pile by the door, one is with the real hatchlings in the library, one is in the dumpster like the too many I disposed of way back when, and two have disappeared into the abyss that is my study. It’s admittedly more difficult to work now, but I think I can make a fledgling, a juvenile; they’re roughly the same size as a man’s palm.
vii.
I’m sorry for the absence, Amelia, but you’re a patient woman. I’m sorry it’s been so long without me writing. The birds will be coming back soon—I can see the heads of daffodils poking out of the frost. I must finish quickly. They have to see that I’m one of them. That I’m like them. I finished the juvenile, and I’ll admit my hubris got the best of me: it’s displayed in the kitchen on a mahogany mount, a spot of honor stolen from one of the first year’s specimens. But the incredible part is that no one could notice. No one could notice at all! It doesn’t look like a man’s hand, bereft of fingers, it doesn’t look like a rat’s tail handsewn with a tuft of borrowed feathers. It looks like an oxtail swallow.
You’ve been a lovely companion these past months, Amelia. I’m just not used to the house so empty.
My final task is almost upon me, and I doubt I’ll be able to write you for a while. I need to make an oxtail swallow, a mature specimen ready for its first migration, replete with iridescent black-green plumage, an ox’s tail, and a body roughly the size of a man’s forearm. I can use mouse tails and wires to fasten feet, I’ve thought it through these past few weeks in bed, the beak will be teeth as the others have been. The tail will be rat again, many, and the feathers will be cannibalized from the existing birds in my collection. Part of me thought I’d kill myself making this final bird, perhaps some part of me wanted to, I don’t know. But the base is ready, sitting in my freezer the past two weeks as I regained my strength. Don’t worry Amelia, I cauterized the wound as I cut it, the greatest doctors in London couldn’t have amputated better if they’d tried. Some things just take time.
This will take time. Each feather must be handsewn. Each talon handstitched. Each tail spliced with utmost care. I have time, Amelia, I have months before the autumn rains arrive. I must only be done by then.
viii.
the project was a success
I amn complete ameial I am going to find the oxtail wsallows
They will show me where they go, they will take me out of wales and well fly
I have feathers in a wayn
I have their feathers, they have my bodyd
Im one of them
Im one of htem amelia
Deaer god, I will find them
Summer is over.