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on .”
    â€œHope, it’s a terribly easy mistake to make. I’ve done it many, many times myself. A partially eaten or decomposed body of a newborn…hard to tell, my dear, hard to tell.”
    â€œBut Hauser—”
    â€œAnton just confirmed to me that it was a baby baboon.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œI don’t blame you, Hope, I want you to know that. You were doing your job. I just wish you had come straight to me with yourhypothesis.” Now he took a seat. I wondered what he knew of my hypothesis.
    â€œI must say I thought—”
    â€œI didn’t want,” he interrupted again, and gestured at my journal, “I didn’t want you to be barking up blind alleys.”
    â€œThank you.”
    He stood up. “We’re not fools here, Hope. Please don’t underestimate us. We certainly don’t underestimate you.”
    â€œIt looked very like a chimp, I can tell you.”
    â€œWell…” he said, drawing it out, relaxed now that I had admitted it. Then he did something extraordinary: he leaned toward me and kissed me on the cheek. I felt the prickle of his neat beard.
    â€œGood night, my dear. Thank God you were wrong.” That smile again. “Our work here—” he paused. “Our work here is terribly important. Its integrity must be beyond any question. You must understand the potential damage of wild—no, I don’t mean wild—of hasty theorizing…hmm?” He looked pointedly at me, said good night once more, and left.
    After he had gone I sat down and smoked a cigarette. I had to calm down. Then I finished writing up my field notes: I described the day’s events precisely, and made no alterations to the data.
    That completed, I left my tent and walked down Main Street to Hauser’s lab. The lights were still on; I knocked and was admitted.
    â€œJust in time,” Hauser said. “You can take these.” He handed me my specimen bottles, rinsed clean.
    â€œWhat were the results?”
    â€œNo trace of meat. Nothing out of the ordinary. Fruit, leaves.”
    I nodded, taking this in. “Eugene’s just been round to see me.”
    â€œI know.” Hauser was unperturbed. “I too thought it was a chimp at first, and I mentioned it to him in passing…so we both took a closer look.” He smiled faintly and cocked his head. “It was a baby baboon. Incontrovertibly.”
    â€œFunny how we both thought it was a chimp, instantly, like that.”
    â€œTerribly easy mistake to make.”
    â€œOf course.” All right, I thought, we’ll play it your way. I looked at him searchingly, directly. To his credit he didn’t flinch.
    â€œMay I have the body please?” I asked.
    â€œI’m afraid not.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI incinerated it two hours ago.”
    THE WAVE ALBATROSS AND THE NIGHT HERON
    I sit on Brazzaville Beach in the early morning sunshine watching two gulls fight and flap over a morsel of food—a fish head or a yam heel, I can’t make it out. They squawk and strut; their beaks clash with a sound like plastic cups being stacked .
    In the Galapagos Islands, the wave albatross mates for life. I have seen films of them smooching and petting each other like an infatuated couple out on a date. And this is no courtship ritual or opportunistic display; these two will cohabit until death intervenes .
    One of my gulls gets wise and snatches up the scrap of food and flies away with it. The other lets him go and pecks distractedly at the sand .
    In the Galapagos Islands there is another bird called the night heron. The night heron produces three chicks and then waits and watches to see which one will emerge the strongest. After a week or so the strongest chick begins to attack the other two, trying to bundle them out of the nest. In the end it succeeds; the weaker chicks fall to the ground and die .
    The mother night heron sits beside the nest watching