Endlings Quotes

“Why do I long to touch the tundra vetches and forget-me-nots, taste the Beaufort Sea and breathe in a place where everyone must kill in order to stay?”
― Joanna Lilley, Endlings

“The Last Labrador Duck Thirteen days to Christmas. The boy’s little sister is loudly hungry, his mother silently, bent at the apron strings. The boy goes to the river wide with ice. He slips; his father’s gun knocks his knee. The hawthorns are scratchy lines as indecipherable to him as newspapers. He stops. There’s a block of grubby snow on the sleek ice. Brown and white, a noose of black. The ice creaks as the boy creeps close. The bird doesn’t stir. Its eyes look closed. Until now, he’s never wondered if birds sleep. The bill is orange at the base, the tip black as a bruised toe. He tugs a glove off with his teeth and raises the gun. He loaded the right shot and it goes straight through. He’s saved his mother a job. The wings aren’t even unfolded. He’s never seen black feet on a duck. Before he puts his glove back on, he touches the bill; it feels so soft, as if the bird is touching him back. He swings the grub home, gavels it on the table his mother just scrubbed. She smiles and he leaves her to it. He’ll go tell Bob on Maple. At supper, it’s awful. Bitter as bark. He’d spit it out if they weren’t so hungry. He coughs, a tiny feather drowned in his throat. That makes his sister giggle. His mother and his father laugh, until a knock at the door quiets them. A man, his hair oiled flat. Not scrawny, yet he’s come for their scraps. The boy’s mother hands him the garbage pail. The man takes out the duck’s head and neck. He’s brought a newspaper to wrap the decapitation in. The man can read, the boy can tell. Labrador duck, the man reckons. That flattened, tar-dipped bill. Rare as a unicorn. Don’t worry, says the boy. It tastes revolting. I’ll leave the next one I see alone.”
― Joanna Lilley, Endlings