“Would you like to step outside and feed him?” he asked. I wanted to say that between the wallaby and the baby doll, I was already overstimulated, but how often in life do you get such an offer? That’s how I found myself on the deck, holding a bowl of raw duck meat cut into slender strips. At the sight of it, the bird stood up and flew onto my arm, which buckled slightly beneath his weight. “Don’t be afraid,” the waiter said, and he talked to the kookaburra in a soothing, respectful voice, the way you might to a child with a switchblade in his hand.
