"Swank," I said, "that's a ten-strike. The mountain is a little out of focus but the mist is immense!"
He squirted me with yellow ochre.
Whinney was in his element. Ornithology, botany, ethulology, he took them all on single-handed.
"Listen to that," he said to me one night as we were strolling back from a friendly game of Kahooti with Baahaabaa and some of our friends.
I listened. It was the most unearthly and at the same time the most beautiful bird-song I have ever heard.
"What is it?" I asked, as the cry resounded again, a piercing screech of pain ending in a long yowl of joy.
"It is the motherhood cry of the fatu-liva," he said. "She has just laid an egg."
"But why the note of suffering?" I queried.
"The eggs of the fatu-liva are square," said Whinney, and I was silenced.
Motherhood is indeed the great mystery. Little did I realize that night how much I was to owe to the fatu-liva and her strange maternal gift which saved my life in one of the weirdest adventures that has ever befallen mortal man.