Striated Caracara

Settle down children, I’m going to tell you a story…

Once upon a time there was an old man called Andrew Graham who worked, well he said he worked anyway, doing something with the RAF, he wasn’t IN the RAF but they couldn’t do their job unless he was there, something to do with runways, he laid the tarmac or painted those white stripes at the end of runways, that sort of thing.

Anyway one day some top secret men at the RAF came to Andrew and said “Andrew, would you like to go somewhere very far away and we’ll pay you riches unimaginable if you do” and Andrew asked for why but the men from the RAF said it was all very hush-hush and he wasn’t to tell anyone, so without knowing anything else about the job Andrew said “Yes”, they’d got him hooked at the mention of riches unimaginable you see.

Then he went home to tell his wife.

She was rather alarmed that Andrew had not asked for more details, like “to where” and “for how long” but the riches unimaginable bit sounded good so she packed him some sandwiches, enough for several days, and a flask of tea and shoved him out of the door then cancelled their Sky Sports subscription because she sure as hell wouldn’t be needing that for a while.

Andrew found himself sitting in a draughty shed at Brize Norton for several days until the weather conditions were right for the men from the RAF said that they were going so far away that the aeroplane would only just have enough petrol to get there and they’d only get one go at landing and if the weather was bad then they’d be truly fucked because there was nowhere else to land but in the sea, “You can swim can’t you Andrew” they asked.

Many days later Andrew sat on the edge of a folding bed with some hairy RAF blankets and snow outside the wooden cabin they’d given him, apparently this place was called the Falklands or something like that and it was at the very arse-end of the world, so far away in fact that the aeroplane really did have just the one shot at landing and as soon as the wheels touched the runway the engines stopped because they really had run out of petrol just like the men from the RAF said might happen.

After a few days Andrew asked the men from the RAF when he’d be going home as his sandwiches had run out now and the men from the RAF just coughed and shuffled their feet and muttered something like “You’ll be fuckin lucky” and Andrew got to wondering if the riches unimaginable bit was just a ploy to send him here.

Every day after working on the runway Andrew would go down to what they jokingly called “the beach” which was in fact just a collection of stones upon which the sea lapped and if that doesn’t sound forlorn enough the temperature of the sea was minus 30 degrees or something like that and no-one ever swam in it, well not the ones who were ever seen again anyway.

Andrew couldn’t speak to his wife back in England because at the arse-end of the world there are no telephones and it takes eight months to send a letter home on the mailship because its just a sailing ship and the winds blow in the wrong direction.

So every day at “the beach” Andrew would take a slice of cake from his dwindling ration box and sit on a rock staring out to sea in the hope that the sun might come out for a while instead of it pissing it down all the time and by-and-by he came to notice a bird sitting some distance away.

Over several days the bird came closer and closer to Andrew and one day he threw it a piece of his cake which the bird devoured and within the week Andrew was sharing his cake with the bird and all its family which it had brought with it as cake is always better than dead sheep or fish anyday.

The bird was a sort of eagle and was called a Striated Caracara, Andrew learned this from an ancient book in his wooden hut which had been left there many years ago when someone called Captain Scott had passed through and the Caracara and Andrew got on like a house on fire and cake quickly became all of the Caracara’s main diet, they loved Andrews cake especially when he put jam on it.

Then one day the men from the RAF came and told Andrew to pack his valise for on the morrow he was to fly home with the same warnings that they might not have enough petrol etc etc and so on that last day Andrew took lots of photos of the Caracara and all its family and he bade them all a farewell and they said “Will you leave the rest of your cake please Andrew ?”

And when he got home he told me this full story and he gave me one of the photos he’d taken and asked if I’d do a watercolour of the Caracara for him.

It was this photo (above).

I looked at it.

“I can’t even see its fucking face Andy” I said and threw it back at him.

This all happened several years ago and now I’ve relented – the Striated Caracara bird will have its portrait done these next few days – Hurrah !

Postscript – all of this story is true, as is the information published by the RSPB that the Striated Caracara is now bordering on the endangered list thanks in the main to some idiot changing its diet from dead sheep and fish to cake.