Never has the dodo been so often in our minds than since it has been extinct. In Mauritius especially, the effigy of this bird is visible everywhere – on T-shirts, stamps, signs, in shops, as furry toys, in porcelain, or made of wood. As if it had become the symbol of eternal remorse. HEEDLESS AND HARE-BRAINED When, in the late sixteenth century, the Portuguese landed on the island, then devoid of all human presence, they discovered the voluminous bird, a sort of hookbilled turkey that was so heavy (up to 20 kilos!) it couldn’t fly, and sometimes couldn’t even run. On the island, the dodo had no predators, so over the years its wings gradually shrank until they were no more than useless appendages. The unsuspecting dodo laid its eggs, one at a time, right on the ground. No doubt that is why the Portuguese nicknamed it the “doudo”, the idiot. Linnaeus gave it a Latin name, no less disparaging: Didus ineptus. Unfortunately for this reckless creature, while its meat was deemed tough, it was very easy to catch. In barely one century, and if you include the diseases, dogs and rats imported by man, it was either eradicated or cooked. The last specimen was officially recorded in 1662. In the late seventeenth century, it literally vanished. Its distant cousin from Rodrigues or Réunion, the solitaire, outlived it by a few decades, before succumbing in its turn to man’s voracious appetite. At first, the extinction of the dodo nearly wiped out its memory, too. It was eventually believed to be a legend, the fruit of the fertile imagination of a few nostalgic residents. And yet, travellers, voyagers and scientists – including the French naturalist Georges Buffon – have left accurate accounts from which sketches and paintings were made. PRECIOUS FRAGMENTS Then, like a phoenix, the dodo rose out of its oblivion. In 1865, at the Mare-aux-Songes, near Plaisance, digs were conducted by a railway engineer, Harry P. Higginson (1838– 1900), during the construction of the line between Port Louis and Mahébourg. At the same time as those of a species of turtle also extinct, dodo bones were exhumed from the marshes. Other discoveries ensued, enabling scientists to reconstruct a life-size specimen of the bird – notably in the Natural History Museum in Port Louis. Further digs during the 2000s yielded other fragments of dodo skeletons, now likened to a specific species of pigeon. Today, people fall over themselves to get certain very sought-after bones in auction rooms. The worldwide posterity of this strange bird owes much to the somewhat eccentric English writer, Lewis Carroll. In 1865, he stopped short in an Oxford museum before a painting by the Dutch animal painter, Roelandt Savery, showing a dodo in a mannerist style. This representation of the dodo, the best known and most often reproduced to date, inspired the author, who was at that time writing his worldfamous novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. To dry the young BEAUTIFUL STORY 12 The dodo, immortalised in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Le dodo, immortalisé dans Alice au pays des merveilles.
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