The Swan looked on admiringly. “You’re a funny fellow,” he said; “when I saw one of your family for the first time I thought your body and your head were fixed up on stilts. Now I realise that you have a very special allowance of leg and neck. Why?”
“I’m built on special lines in order to realise my peculiar destiny,” said the Flamingo stiffly.
“Well, well,” replied the Swan, “don’t take things so seriously. You’re a bit stiff in the leg, but you have a flexible neck, and your tongue ought to match it. Tell me your story, I’m a good listener, and you don’t seem to have any friends here among your own companions.”
“They are good enough in their way,” replied the Flamingo, “but they are all European or American birds. I come from Equatorial Africa, from the land of great rivers, where the crocodiles bask in the mud, and the hippopotamus lives under the water, coming now and again to the surface to fill his lungs with air. Mine is a land of marabous and vultures, of lions and antelopes, of rhinoceros and giraffe. The rarest and strangest creatures kept in the gardens are in a way my companions, but the other flamingoes on this pond can boast no such experiences as mine.”
“How come you here, then?” asked the Swan. “If you had a good time in Africa, why leave it?”
“A thing you call a sportsman is to blame,” replied the Flamingo. “We were having one of our state processions along the banks of the river, and he came upon us. We had not seen a white man before, and knew nothing of his intentions, but he knew our habits, and crept up so quietly against the wind that when we rose we were not more than thirty yards away from him; he could not resist the temptation of a shot, perhaps because he thought we were good to eat. The flamingo he picked out fell dead, another was hit hard, and I was pricked in the wing by a stray pellet, and picked up before I could run. The sportsman removed the pellet, and clipped my wings, so that I could not fly, and told one of his black boys to feed me well. Then he brought me to his home over the seas, and here I am. Excuse me a moment——”
With this abrupt apology the Flamingo lowered his head and dug his flat upper mandible into the mud below the surface of the water. He took a mouthful of mud and ooze, and then filtered it with the help of his tongue and the little ridges along the edge of the lower mandible. Then he thrust his neck up in curves that gave it the appearance of a serpent’s body, and moved both mandibles together as though to sample the flavour of the mud.
“It isn’t really to my liking,” he said mournfully. “Why, where I was born and bred I’d have had a mouthful of worms, or little frogs, or other delicacies for less than the trouble I’ve just taken.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” suggested the Swan, “you are fed by the keepers, so you don’t go hungry.”
“It matters a great deal,” persisted the Flamingo. “What makes every creature in this place sick to death? What makes so many die outright? Just the fact that they will be fed at stated hours. There isn’t any interest in the business, there isn’t any search, there isn’t any travel. There have been days when the flamingo army has travelled miles and miles on the wing searching for new feeding grounds, every bird with his eyes wide open, his neck stretched out, his legs hanging straight out behind him. Each one of us, even those in the centre of the wedge, hopes at such a time to be the first to sight a good camping ground. Then the appetite following long hours of travel, the joy of the exercise, and wonder of the sights that we see—strange men, fierce animals, impenetrable forests, and lands where the beasts of the field are rulers and man is of no importance at all.