Today’s News Update focuses on our much loved pet Dodo. Our Dodo was born in a laboratory in Berlin and shipped to London in 2004. His name is Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin.Calling a Dodo Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin is, of course, as clichéd as calling a dog Fido. Indeed, the Dodo asked to be called Schwarzwälderkirschtortenlieferantenhut, but sadly, he simply didn’t look like a Schwarzwälderkirschtortenlieferantenhut and the name lasted only a few stuttering, uncomfortable hours before everyone resorted back to Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin in relief.

Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin has had a troubled time adapting to life in England. He likes to spend his days in the garden of Dodo Ink’s Soho haunt, snuffling for bulbs, roots and grubs, occasionally breaking off to deliver his 2-note, pigeon-like call, Doo-doo, Doo-doo. His appearance caused something of a stir in the avian world. The birds of London are notoriously territorial. Matters were not helped whenDampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin asked what ‘those lovely blue birds that danced on the fence’ were called and, on hearing that they were called ‘blue tits’ let slip a dirty chuckle.

Swallows sneered at him; blackbirds swore; thrushes defecated on him; robins ignored him entirely. Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin became depressed. His coos ceased. He sat in his pink birdbath, smoking Ernte 23s, reading his way through the works of Ernest Becker and John Gray. He became prone to making scathing, random remarks about homo sapiens being ‘just another species’ and pointed out that they are most prone to excusing themselves with the cliché but I’m only human when they are most guilty of behaving like animals.

An avian psychiatrist attributed his pain to Post Extinction Trauma and diagnosed a Lazarus Complex. A prescription of antidepressants failed to heal his greying mental state – until, one sweet day in summer, he broke off from reading Denial Of Death to listen to an exquisite coo. He looked up and saw a fat grey pigeon waddling along the fence. It was love at first sight.

It was the avian equivalent of Romeo and Juliet. A Dodo and pigeon, both from the Raphinae family, both sporting beaks with distinctive keratinous tips and yet! – so different in height, in plumage, in literary tastes (the pigeon being a fan of the novels of Alan Titchmarsh). Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin also had considerable trouble pronouncing the pigeon’s name, Jim, which caused some awkward moments at their wedding ceremony. To this day, we at Dodo Ink remain proudly fond of Jim and Dampfschifffahrtgesellschaftsdirektorsstellvertretersgemahlin, who are now honeymooning in Hampstead.