Down On The Farm (part 2)
'Ovi' means egg in Greek or Latin. Like 'ova'. 'Raptor' means predator, like the dinosaurs in movies that hunt in
packs. When the fossilized remains of the first one was discovered, it was close to a nest of fossil eggs. It had grasping little
hands. The assumption it dined on eggs was obvious, but wrong. Given the way mine look, the sardonic expression was
probably what led paleontologists astray. Actually, it turned out that the nest was an oviraptor nest and the oviraptor was
probably protecting it. They can be protective little bastards. We don't collect eggs by sticking our hands underneath them,
the crates are set up so the eggs slide down into a catch tray.
My oviraptors are a little less than a meter or so long. I have two kinds, the females I use for egg laying and the
breeding pairs. Of the breeding pairs, only Wilma still lives in the house.
Wilma is mostly reddish brown, with black bars on her legs and tail. She has her own room, with her crate with it's
iguana light. Back when I got Fred and Wilma, everybody thought that oviraptors needed full spectrum light the way iguanas
do. They don't, but Wilma is used to it. She's eight, which isn't old for an oviraptor.
My office is across from her room. Right now she sits on the window looking out into the backyard.
I cluck at her. She doesn't turn her head, she never does, but the quills of eyebrow feathers raise a little. When
she's excited they stand way out and she rears on her hind legs and dances to look bigger. I know that oviraptors really don't
domesticate. They don't have much forebrain. They're all r-brain, all reptile, all food/fight/wait reflexes. They're primitive.
Dinosaurs. How much more primitive can you get?
Still, I think that Wilma likes me as much as an oviraptor can. I go into her room and she raises her head so that
I can rub between her eyes. She watches the leaves moving in the trees, and then, blissfully, closes her eyes. Her skin is
warm and smooth and pliable.
"Well," I say, "you saved me once, baby. I'd like it if you could save me again."
Wilma sits blissfully pleased but unlikely to save me from the FDA.
Wilma and the farm look unchanging. Wilma watches the trees and I start breeding oviraptors. They lay a clutch
of eggs in about three weeks. I sell some of the eggs before they even hatch. People pay less for an egg than they do for a
hatchling, but I have bills.
I sit in my office and stare at my accounts and try to scheme. I get a lot fewer calls than I used to. The fancy lawyer
has never called me back. Late one afternoon I get a call.
"Ms. Sabiston? I'm Grace Kelly.I would like to discuss with you your oviraptors. Krishnamachari Importers is a
growing member of the fashion industry and we believe we could be partners to our mutual benefit." Grace Kelly sounds as if
she is from somewhere like Kansas or Utah.
My system sets off in search of Krishnamachari Importers and Grace Kelly. It's a smart system, which is good
because I don't know that I could have spelled Krishnamachari on my own.
"You breed oviraptors, am I correct?" Grace Kelly asks.
"Some," I say. "Not much anymore."
"We are looking for someone who can supply us with the resources to make fashion accessories," she says.
Krishnamachari Importers, my system informs me triumphantly, makes handbags, billfolds, day books and shoes. A picture
of Grace Kelly shows her to be little and Indonesian and nothing like the late Princess of Monaco.
"You mean oviraptor hides?" I ask.
"Yes ma'am," she says. "Krishnamachari Importers specializes in exotic fashion accessories. Ostrich skin,
sharkskin, catfish skin. All farm raised, of course. Krishnamachari only uses renewable resources from vendors who do not
exploit undeveloped or sensitive lands like wetlands and rain forests."
"Of course," I say, bemused. Why would someone name an Indonesian girl Grace Kelly?
"We realize that you are an entirely different sort of business, and we are prepared to help you make changes."
Grace Kelly says. "I'm sending you some promotional materials and a proposal, if you don't mind."
I don't mind.
"After you look them over, will you please give me a call and let me know if you are interested? Then perhaps we
can find a mutual time to meet and discuss the proposal?"
"That would be fine," I say.
I am destroying some three hundred dozen eggs a day and dumping them in a wash at the back of my property.
When the wind is blowing from the wrong direction the sulfurous smell of rotten dinosaur eggs feels almost palpable, a slick taste
at the back of my throat. The local raccoons and coyotes believe I've opened a food court. I am terribly interested in talking
to Grace Kelly.
So I find myself in a business suit from my closet. It's a five year old business suit, but I always tended towards
conservative clothes. It is strange to be in the city. The city is so discordant. There is too much for the eye and none of it is
integrated. It is all noise and pattern on pattern, a green neon Thai restaurant sign next to a Victorian painted sign next to elaborate
gilt curlicues announcing a law firm. The air stinks of water standing in puddles. The air smells nothing of earth.
Strange to catch my reflection in the office windows. A lot of the suits have velvet collars--that must be this year's fashion
thing. They are fine looking. My olive looks a little drab, but my old Metropolitan Museum of Art pearl earrings do happen to coincide
with the obsession with things renaissance, so maybe I don't look too dated.
Grace Kelly comes down to the desk to meet me. She is small and slight and I feel calico. She is wearing a delicate suit
of Japanese medieval brocade, elaborate in blue and white, with a white cummerbund that breaks the suit visually almost like an obi
would. This is a fashion accessory company, I remind myself. I am a farmer. If Grace Kelly finds me either dowdy or surprisingly
well turned out for a farmer, she gives no indication.
"Ms. Sabiston," she says in her Idaho or Nebraska way, holding out her hand forthrightly.
"Call me Grace," I say, "please."
"Two Graces," she says. "Isn't that a coincidence."
"It isn't a name you run into every day," I say. "That;s a beautiful suit."
"Thank you," she says.
"I used to work downtown," I say. "Over on Fifth."
"What made you decide to go into dinosaur raising?" she asks.
"I was laid off," I say.
The elevator doors look like hammered brass. They take us up and open on a saffron covered reception area where
a brass Shiva dances in front of a rosewood screen and the air smells of fresh flowers. Faint Indian music plays. It is a beautiful place,
of course. Grace Kelly's suit clashes a bit with the decor. Too much pattern and shimmer. I don't fit the decor any better.
My eyes are tired. My ears are tired. Even my nose is tired and my head aches.
Grace Kelly's office is a gray cubicle, and she shimmers in it like a dragonfly on concrete. Across her desk in disarray
are leather purses and daybooks. "I meant to have this all straightened up," she says.
My cubicle looked nothing like this. My cubicle was forest green and bone and burgundy, colors some decorator had
said would never go out of style. It was small, though, and I had a wall covered in those sticky notes. During the transition when
the company was moving out of North America I used to come to work and hives would break out on my belly and legs.
I feel itchy now.
The day books are lovely. There is something about the promise of a daybook; some belief that my life can be so
neatly controlled. We had seminars on how to use our daybooks. Grace Kelly shows me a beautiful black ostrich hide daybook
and I open it and the screen shimmers to life. There is almost nothing on this daybook. Mine was connected to my work station
and had my addresses and appointments, my documents in progress. When I wrote in it, it converted my handwriting into an
idealized version, Parkeresque. I would have liked it to be Spencerian hand, but I was embarrassed by my own pretentiousness.
Ostrich leather has little raised pinpoints, like pimples, where the feathers went in. Sharkskin is rough. There is a red
leather sharkskin purse that makes me want to touch it. The supple sheen of catfish doesn't even feel like something natural.
Grace Kelly explains how the catfish is impregnated with a fibrous fabric. "Like tyvek," she says. "You know those
parcel envelopes that you can't tear open? Not the brown paper ones, the other ones. They feel like paper but they aren't."
The catfish goes very well with my suit. It is a pale gray color that is hard to describe because it seems to partake
of whatever other colors are around it.
She puts a piece of leather in my hands. "This is oviraptor," she says.
It is so soft it is almost spongy. The scale ridges are visible. The leather has been rendered a soft buckskin color.
"Does it matter what color the oviraptor hides are?" I ask.
She shakes her head and her geometrically precise hair swings. "The tanning process takes care of all of that." I
wish I had her hair. Mine never hangs straight and shines.
"A lot of mine are brindle," I explain.
"What's that?" she asks.
"Sort of tiger striped. Sometimes you see bulldogs and great danes that are brindle. Sort of orangish brown and black."
She nods politely.
"Do you like dogs?" I ask. Tiffin the border collie is sitting at home moping. Maybe even destroying things. Tiffin
hates to have nothing to do.
"Oh sure" she says. "But I live in an apartment. No pets."
No animals. Seems strange. On the other hand, I went years without having any animals and never thought
about it. Tiffin isn't my dog, Tiffin is my employee. A cheap workaholic, but still.
We discuss the proposal. I keep thinking the words 'sold my soul to the company store' which is melodramatic
and foolish. The proposal would tie me up tight with Krishnamachari. They would pay from some of the capital
improvements on my farm to make the transition from eggs to hides, and would work with me on establishing a tanner.
Actually, they would have final approval over the tanner who would have to meet three sigma requirements for defects--
I used to do this. Not sell oviraptor hides, but deal with suppliers; three sigma defect tolerances and
establishing relationships with vendors. It is in the manufacturer's best interests to have the supplier in his hip pocket.
Krishnamachari would want to tie me up in exclusive deals so I couldn't sell to anyone else.
It was in my best interest to be as free as possible so I could be as flexible as possible, but without financial
help I didn't even know how I was going to weather the time it took me to begin breeding the hides in earnest.
I should be discussing guaranteed minimums--I mean what if I converted to this and no one wanted to
buy dinosaur daybook covers? There I would be with a yard full of oviraptors and no orders again.
I can't sell eggs. I have to pay the bills or me and Tiffin the border collie could be out on the street.
Will herd for food.
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Maureen F. McHugh (mcq@en.com)