Parrot

"James?"

"Yes, joy?"

"I wonder if I might beg your assistance in a matter, a very small matter, of my specimens."

"With all my heart, though you know I am no great hand with your naturalizing."

"It does not signify. Come."

James follows him to the tiny cabin belonging to the Sophie's surgeon and housing his specimens.

"Christ. I never knew you had so many."

"Oh, they are not very many at all," says Stephen with very thinly disguised pride. "But do you see that parrot there? Perched atop the boxes to your right? The villain, the wicked thief in London that sold him to me told me he was dead. And now I cannot get him down and make a study of his beak for the Royal Society. Here, I have procured a net for the purpose, but you are tall and I am not."

"I shall catch him for you, Stephen." He takes the net and prepares to swoop upon the bird.

"Soft, soft, do not alarm the parrot, I pray." It is too late. James brings the net down, the parrot squawks and in an explosion of blue feathers flies across the cabin and slams into the wall.

Stephen and James stand dumbfounded. The parrot slides slowly down the wall. Stephen picks it up and puts it in an empty cage standing by. "...I have no more desire to study him today. If you should like, I have just obtained a new specimen from my colleague, the chair of anatomy at Cambridge - an admirably large python."