Rare, or Medium Rare? Summary and Analysis

Richard Lewis gets passengers to answer his questions by watching them rather than the road until they do. An ornithologist, Lewis asks Adams and Carwardine why they have come to Mauritius to see a fruit bat on nearby Rodrigues rather than tour his captive breeding center run by Carl Jones. Mauritius is an ecological battle zone. Lewis shows them around the compound that houses "some of the rarest, sexiest birds in the world." Pink, a Mauritius kestrel (falcon), has "imprinted" on Jones at hatching and believes itself a human. He has nothing to do with fellow kestrels and lacks survival skills. Female kestrels are belligerent, so they collect Pink's semen to inseminate them artificially.

Jones calls the breeding center his greatest failure. Written off as a school boy, he collects animals but somehow makes it...