Thoughts on Gutting Fish

Toxonomic number: 562521
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Aves
Order: Ciconiiformes
Family: Procellariidae
Genus: Pseudobulweria

Sometime during the year 1855 a Fijian petrel (Pseudobulweria macgillivrayi) was killed, skinned, stiffed with cotton, and issued a meticulously scribbled toe-tag detailing the conditions of its demise and various observations thereon. This event, largely ignored by history, marked the last appearance of this luckless bird before being reclassified as extinct. On the evening of April 30, 1984, among a gloomy rainstorm and in a punishing wind, Dr. Dick Watling was accompanied in his ornithological duties on the Island of Gua in the Figian archipelago by Ratu Filipe Lewanavanua. Quite unexpectedly, from out of the gloom flapped a single Pseudobulweria macgillivrayi, which unceremoniously slammed directly into Dr. Watling's head. He later wrote, "A more undignified return to human awareness after 129 years of peaceful oblivion could not be imagined".

NOTE: This entry is in honor of the recent birth of the blog eponymagain, a Wudnerkammern of cerebral spice & single-engine flights of fancy.