I posted this on another blog in 2002:
In 1999, as an intern training at the editorial office of The Week in Kochi, I came to be known as the Birdman thanks to a feature on Kashmir’s Dal Lake that I had to rewrite. I peppered the piece with pintails, garganey and shovellers, adding colour and cackle to what arrived on the desk as a pretty drab report.
It never occurred to me that the news of my skills would be tom-tommed all the way to the sacred cabins of the top brass.
One day a senior editor came up to my workstation, and bent down sheepishly for a seemingly conspiratorial exchange.
“Do ducks have pricks?” he hissed.
“No,” I said, inadvertently mimicking his whisper, and pretending to conceal my shock.
“Then how do they do it?” he asked incredulously.
“Birds belong to Class Aves, they have no external genitalia,” I said, trying in vain not to sound professorial. “Both sexes have a cloacal aperture, which is differentiated internally. Often the male may have cloacal spurs to secure the moment of contact.”
“Which means…”
“Which means ‘sex’ between birds is merely cloacal contact,” I said, shrugging.
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“Oh…” he said, his face betraying great dismay.
“Yes, sir,” I empathized. “The joys of intercourse, more specifically intromission, are strictly not for the birds.”
UPDATE:
The beloved bird scientist Gopi Sundar updates me thus:
Ducks are among the few aves who have semi-pricks
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