Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [4]
It only took Martha a few seconds to get the hang of the little electronic book. She accessed the index first, but rapidly decided that browsing wasn’t the best way forward – ‘It’s got about 18 billion entries under “A”!’
‘Wait till you get to “S”,’ said the Doctor, ‘sandpiper, spiny anteater, seventeen‐year locust, Sea Devil…’ – and just inputted the word ‘Dodo’. A page sprang to life before her eyes: The ISpyder Book of Earth Creatures: Dodo, Raphus cucullatus.
‘You get eight hundred points for spotting a dodo,’ she noted. ‘How many do I need for a certificate?’
‘Um… nine million, I think,’ he said.
‘Oh well. Gotta start somewhere.’
The TARDIS began shuddering again.
‘Here we are!’ the Doctor announced. ‘One tropical paradise, palm trees and non‐extinct birds included in the price. Incidentally, here’s an interesting if disputed fact: the word “dodo” is a corruption of the Dutch “doedaars”, meaning fat, um, rear. So if a dodo asks you if its bum looks big, probably tactful to fib.’
The instant that the ship had ground to a halt, the Doctor’s hand was on the door lever. Martha loved that about him, the eagerness to explore, to tear off the wrapping of each new place like a child with its presents at Christmas.
The doors opened. Framed in the doorway was a large browny‐grey-y‐white-y bird with a little tufty tail and a comically curved beak, far too big for its head. Actually, it was the thing’s size overall that surprised Martha the most – she’d been expecting maybe a turkey, and it was much bigger than that, perhaps a metre in height.
But what shouldn’t have surprised her was that despite its unbelievably sophisticated technology, despite the Doctor’s supposedly expert piloting and despite the automatic dodo detector, the TARDIS had got it wrong again. Oh, a dodo had been detected all right, there was the proof right in front of her. But what it wasn’t surrounded by was a tropical paradise complete with palm trees. Instead there was a sign: Raphus cucullatus, Dodo. And there was a resigned dullness in the creature’s eye.
It was in a cage.
THE ISPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES
DODO
Rephus cuculletus
Location: Mauritius
The flightless dodo bird is the largest member of the pigeon family and is found only on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Its most notable feature is the large, curved beak that dominates its featherless face. It is browny‐grey in colour, with curly grey tail feathers and yellow tips to its small wings.
Addendum:
Last reported sighting: AD 1681.
Cause of extinction: hunting by man; introduction of non‐indigenous species, e.g. pigs, leading to destruction of eggs and competition for food; destruction of habitat.
ISpyder points value: 800
THE ISPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES
Creature Points
Subtotal 800
Dodo 800
TWO
Martha here again, hello. So, we’ve found a dodo – and it’s in a cage. Of course, that was the last thing I wanted. Well, not the very last, that would be to find ourselves back on the planet Belepheron, where the air smelled of bad eggs and boiled cabbage, and the natives’ idea of a friendly greeting was to smother you in green slime and cook you slowly over a fiery pit – look, you know what I mean. We’d just had that really awkward thing about zoos and cages, and I didn’t want to go there again, so discovering that the TARDIS had taken us to a bloomin’ bird behind bars was not a good thing.
If you’d been there, seeing what I saw, you’d probably ask why I thought it was a captive, not a dead specimen. Why I thought it was alive. For a start, it actually wasn’t in a cage, you see, that was just the impression I got at first. It was in a sort of perspex box, the metal bars were part of a floor‐to‐ceiling grille that spanned the whole room. But the big thing was, it didn’t move. Not a millimetre. Not the