It must have been at least three weeks ago when we had that flying
saucer flurry. Observers the other side of Katahdin saw it come
down this side; observers this side saw it come down the other.
Size anywhere from six inches to sixty feet in diameter (or was it
cigar-shaped?) and speed whatever you please. Seem to recall that
witnesses agreed on a rosy-pink light. There was the inevitable
gobbledegookery of official explanation designed to leave everyone
impressed, soothed and disappointed.
I paid scant attention to the excitement and less to the
explanations--naturally, I thought it was just a flying saucer. But now
Camilla has hatched out an angel.
I have eight hens, all yearlings except Camilla; this is her third
spring. I boarded her two winters at my neighbor Steele's farm when I
closed this shack and shuffled my chilly bones off to Florida, because
even as a pullet she had a manner which overbore me. I could never have
eaten Camilla. If she had looked at the ax with that same expression of
rancid disapproval (and she would) I should have felt I was beheading
a favorite aunt. Her only concession to sentiment is the annual rush of
maternity to the brain--normal, for a case-hardened White Plymouth Rock.
This year she stole a nest successfully, in a tangle of blackberry. By
the time I located it, I estimated I was about two weeks too late. I
had to outwit her by watching from a window; she is far too acute to be
openly trailed from feeding ground to nest. When I had bled and pruned
my way to her hideout, she was sitting on nine eggs and hating my guts.
They could not be fertile, since I keep no rooster, and I was about to
rob her when I saw the ninth egg was not hers, nor any other chicken's.
* * * * *
It was a deep blue, transparent, with flecks of inner light that made
me think of the first stars in a clear evening. It was the same size as
Camilla's eggs. There was an embryo, but nothing I could recognize.
I returned the egg to Camilla's bare and fevered breastbone, and went
back to the house for a long cool drink.
That was ten days ago. I know I ought to have kept a record; I examined
the blue egg every day, watching how some nameless life grew within it,
until finally the angel chipped the shell deftly in two parts. This was
evidently done with the aid of small horny out-growths on her elbows;
these growths were sloughed off on the second day.
I wish I had seen her break the shell, but when I visited the
blackberry tangle three days ago she was already out. She poked her
exquisite head through Camilla's neck feather, smiled sleepily, and
snuggled back into darkness to finish drying off. So what could I do,
more than save the broken shell and wriggle my clumsy self out of there?
I had removed Camilla's own eggs the day before--Camilla was only
moderately annoyed. I was nervous about disposing of them even though
they were obviously Camilla's, but no harm was done. I cracked each one
to be sure. Very frankly rotten eggs and nothing more.
In the evening of that day I thought of rats and weasels, as I should
have earlier. I hastily prepared a box in the kitchen and brought the
two in, the angel quiet in my closed hand. They are there now. I think
they are comfortable.
Three days after hatching, the angel is the length of my fore-finger,
say three inches tall, with about the relative proportions of a
six-year-old girl. Except for head, hands, and probably the soles of
her feet, she is clothed in feathery down the color of ivory. What can
be seen of her skin is a glowing pink--I do mean glowing, like the
inside of certain seashells. Just above the small of her back are two
stubs which I take to be infantile wings. They do not suggest an extra
pair of specialized forelimbs. I think they are wholly differentiated
organs; perhaps they will be like the wings of an insect. Somehow I
never thought of angels buzzing. Maybe she won't. I know very little
about angels.
* * * * *
At present the stubs are covered with some dull tissue, no doubt a
protective sheath to be discarded when the membranes (if they are
membranes) are ready to grow. Between the stubs is a not very prominent
ridge--special musculature, I suppose. Otherwise her shape is quite
human, even to a pair of minuscule mammalian pin-heads just visible
under the down.
How that can make sense in an egg-laying organism is beyond my
comprehension. Just for the record, so is a Corot landscape; so is
Schubert's Unfinished; so is the flight of a hummingbird, or the
other-world of frost on a windowpane.
The down on her head has grown visibly in three days and is of
different quality from the body down. Later it may resemble human hair,
probably as a diamond resembles a chunk of granite....
A curious thing has happened. I went to Camilla's box after writing
that. Judy[1] was already lying in front of it, unexcited. The angel's
head was out from under the feathers, and I thought, with more
verbal distinctness than such thoughts commonly take, _So here I am,
a naturalist of middle years and cold sober, observing a three-inch
oviparous mammal with down and wings_.
[Footnote 1: Dr. Bannerman's dog, mentioned often earlier in the
journal, a nine-year-old English setter. According to an entry of May
15, 1951, she was then beginning to go blind--BLAINE]
The thing is--she giggled!
Now it might have been only amusement at my appearance, which to
her must be enormously gross and comic. But another thought formed
unspoken: _I am no longer lonely._ And her face, hardly bigger than
a dime, immediately changed from laughter to a brooding and friendly
thoughtfulness.
Judy and Camilla are old friends. Judy seems untroubled by the angel. I
have no worries about leaving them alone together.
* * * * *