A letter from an ornithologist

Last month the House received a courteous letter from a professor of ornithology, who had visited the Salon on a Thursday evening with a group of graduate students and asked permission to return and fit the Owl with a numbered leg band, so that it might be recorded in the national banding database.

She had been told at the door that the Owl was made. She had been told again in the Salon, where the attendant introduces it as a replica of no bird in particular. She explained in her letter that she had heard both statements, did not doubt the house’s sincerity, and had spent thirty years with owls and did not believe them.

The President replied by hand, as he replies to every letter. He thanked her and declined, on the grounds that the Owl does not leave its case, and enclosed a copy of the Owl’s certificate, which lists the thirty-one people who made it, with an invitation to visit the Atelier and meet some of them. She has visited twice.

The house has begun to consider whether the Owl ought to have a public record that does not depend on anyone believing the house.