And that was that. I had been around and around the world with strange and wonderful traveling companions. I had examined fifty-five stuffed Labrador Ducks in thirty cities, and sampled nine eggs that later proved to have nothing to do with the birds I was after. From standing on Audubon’s hillside in Labrador to measuring my last duck, my adventures had taken me four years, nine months, and eighteen days. I had, as far as I could tell, seen every surviving stuffed Labrador Duck in the world. The end of the quest left me with a sense of elation at having completed a task that no one had ever attempted before, and that no one would ever bother to repeat. After all, twelve people have stood on the Moon, but I was the only person to have seen every Labrador Duck. But I also felt a sense of deflation that the journey was over. To be completely forthcoming, there were several Labrador Duck specimens that I couldn’t account for, and, as friends have pointed out again and again, it is possible that new specimens remain to be discovered. How confident am I that I found them all? So confident that I will pay a reward of $10,000 to the first person who can direct me to a genuine stuffed Labrador Duck that I have not seen and described in this book*. I don’t want to buy the duck; I just want to examine it. After I have verified its legitimacy, you get the money. There is no point in trying to fake me out with a duck recreated from bits of other birds; I’ve seen it all before..
If you choose to embark on your own Labrador Duck quest, you might want to start with the specimens that may have been destroyed by wartime bombing in Liverpool, Amiens, and Mainz. I’ll give you one more lead, and then you are on your own. In November of 1844, Colonel Nicolas Pike shot a drake Labrador Duck at the mouth of Ipswich River. History doesn’t say whether or not the duck was doing anything to provoke the colonel. Perhaps Pike just really, really hated ducks. The bird was stuffed by John Akhurst, given to the Long Island Historical Society and eventually deposited in the Brooklyn Museum. At my request, Deborah Wythe of the Brooklyn Museum did some digging. Between them, Charles Schroth and Carles O’Brien at the American Museum of Natural History received from the Brooklyn Museum fifty-eight cartons of bird study skins in August, 1935. If birds are packaged like cigarettes, twenty-five to a pack and eight packs to a carton, we are talking about roughly 1,600 specimens. No mention was made of mounted specimens in general, nor about the Brooklyn Labrador Duck in particular. I have already examined every Labrador Duck specimen at the AMNH and it isn’t there. John Hubbard told me that the Bailey-Laidlaw Collection at Virginia Tech in Blacksburgh had received a chunk of the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, but Curt Adkisson, current curator, was able to tell me they do not have, and never did have, a Labrador Duck. It must be out there somewhere. Good luck in your quest.
Glen Chilton
*I should make it clear that this offer comes from me alone and not from my publishers or anyone else involved in bringing you this book. For more information, and for the full terms and conditions of the reward, visit my website, www.glenchilton.com, on publication of the book.
The foregoing is excerpted from The Curse of the Labrador Duck By Glen Chilton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
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