Dead birds of the world, unite!
The two most famous tragically dead birds of the 21st century will be united, thanks to the man who won the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize. The sparrow which was gunned down last month by an angry chain-of-thousands-of-dominoes demonstrator — the death provoked outrage among the Dutch populace — will soon have a place of honor in the Rotterdam Nature Museum. It will reside near the preserved body of the first scientifically-documented mallard duck victim of homosexual necrophilia.
For nearly a month, the little sparrow’s carcass has been the victim, post-mortem, of legal wrangling, and was in danger of being swept under a bureaucratic rug. Now, thanks to the intercession of Kees Moeliker, the Nature Museum’s curator of birds, the feathery corpse will be preserved for its adoring public and for science.
Moeliker shot to fame in 2003, when he was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for observing and documenting the now-famous case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
Here is a statement issued by the museum:
Domino sparrow preserved for science and education
The sparrow that was shot last month in the Netherlands after it had toppled 24.000 (of 4.000.000) domino stones of a domino-toppling world record attempt, and caused so much emotion (and threats to the shooter) will be preserved and exhibited in the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam. Thanks to tenacious lobby by the museum?s birdcurator, Kees Moeliker, the Counsel for the Prosecution in The Hague has decided to hand the dead sparrow (that was seized by the authorities) over to the museum. The excited curator stated that the sparrow will be either mounted or ?pickled? (preserved in alcohol) depending on the damage caused by the fatal shot, and serve as a centre piece of a coming major exhibition about the rise and fall of the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus). ?The domino sparrow is a symbol of the love the Dutch apparently have for this bird, and we will conserve it just like we did with other birds that tell a story, like the mallard duck that was the first ever recorded victim of homosexual necrophilia.? said Moeliker. The sparrow now resides in the freezer of a Ministerial Special Agent involved in the investigation on the (illegal) killing, but will be handed over to Moeliker next week. Please note that the house sparrow is an endangered species in the Netherlands, with numbers declining by half during the last two decades.
UPDATE DECEMBER 11, 2005: Kees Moeliker is the unnamed face in the prominent photograph on today’s BBC report about all this.