The Feather Thief
and recognizing the villain

I’m incredibly lucky to have acquired a stack of great books to escape into during this forced isolation. The Feather Thief, however, came to me without my choosing it or hunting it down; it just arrived on my doorstep one day. (Thank you, mom) But when it came time to choose my next book, I picked it because I needed a real escape from the deeply emotional, soul-work type of reading I’ve been doing so much of this year. I’m learning that there is definitely such a thing as too much introspection. Nothing gets you out of your own head like true crime … right?

The Feather Thief is the story of a 20-year old child prodigy and aspiring flautist who, in 2009, broke into the British Natural History Museum at Tring and stole 299 dead bird skins, some of which were collected by Alfred Russel Wallace in the 1800s. These were scientific artifacts and records of natural history that have been protected for hundreds of years and have contributed to countless scientific breakthroughs, like the discovery of rising mercury levels in the world’s oceans and that DDT contributes to the thinning of eggshells.

The culprit was caught and tried about a year and a half after the theft but was never sent to jail. Many of the skins were destroyed, separated from their tags, or never recovered, making them useless to science. So, why would a 20-year-old flautist want 300 dead birds?

Because of an obsession.

He was obsessed with the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying, an antiquated art form that no longer has anything to do with fishing but everything to do with intricately tying the feathers of endangered and extinct bird species to little fishing hooks for show and glory.

I know, right? People can truly develop an all-consuming fascination with virtually anything. Even with seemingly positive or harmless things, there is always a line that can be crossed. Beyond it, the sense of what is right and good and positive becomes less clear. Tunnel-vision takes over and we lose ourselves.

The author of The Feather Thief becomes obsessed with finding these missing bird skins. So he picks up the investigation that the police are no longer interested or obligated in taking up, and goes to insane lengths to catch the bad guy(s) who never paid for their crime.

So we have the tale of the desperate act of an obsessed boy told in desperation by an obsessed author and that’s when it becomes vibrantly clear: everyone always thinks they are the protagonist of the story. Everyone. And the tunnel-vision of obsession only amplifies that.

When Alfred Russel Wallace was risking life and limb in the jungles of Papua New Guinea trying to find and capture the elusive Bird of Paradise, he seemed to be vaguely aware of the complexity of his own role in the story. When he finally set eyes on the majestic bird he’d been hunting his entire career, he was overcome by its incredible beauty. Vibrant colors and long, majestic feathers ornament this species of bird which has been allowed to evolve in the wild with virtually no natural predators for centuries. Wallace was the hero of his own life’s story: Man travels the world to find the rarest and most beautiful species to bring back for science.

But he was also the villain in the life-story of the Paradisaeidae genus. In studying, killing, preserving, collecting these birds and bringing them back to London, he (though he was not the only one) introduced an insatiable hunger into the hearts of man. Even in the jungle, he recognized that “should civilized man ever reach these distant lands … we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy.” – from the Journal of Alfred Russel Wallace (Johnson, p. 32).

I tried to think of times in my own life when I was convinced I was doing a justified or innocuous thing that turned out to be deeply wrong from a perspective I just couldn’t see at the time – or didn’t want to. While I’ve never stolen anything (I don’t think), I did recall countless times when I’ve hurt people or acted poorly based on a false or clouded judgment. I’ve cheated, gone behind people’s backs, lied, and run away all because I thought my perspective was the most important one at the time.

Beyond my own regrets, I thought of the recent crimes against unarmed black men in the US and the challenging mix of outrage, heartbreak, gratitude, fear, and pride that these events bring out in myself and those I care about. These are the exact situations and emotions that lead to fixation, obsession, and tunnel-vision. But who we chose to see as the protagonist in these stories makes 100% of the difference in terms of how the story will play out, how history will be written, and how real people’s lives will be affected.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once gave a TED talk called “The danger of a single story” (watch it HERE). It’s a powerful reminder that life and story are never really separate and that we have to push ourselves to consider different perspectives in order to more completely understand (and choose) our role. This is the definition of choosing to throw off your tunnel-vision and seek a well-rounded clarity.

Well-written crime stories are good at giving detailed accounts of all the perspectives involved in a case. They make you sympathize at one point or another with every side, leaving you conflicted about what to think and who to trust. Yes, it would be easier if they just told you, “This is the bad-guy. Don’t trust him.” but it’s never that cut-and-dry. And it shouldn’t be! Because that’s not how life/humanity/justice/trust works.

It wasn’t until I flipped the last page of the book that I realized this wasn’t really a story about a museum heist or “a tale of obsession” as it says on the cover. It was about the fact that, in life, we are not always the protagonist that we mean to be. What makes us true heroes, though, is learning to see the other story-lines so that we can notice and atone for when we’ve been the villain.

So much for getting out of my own head …

Books & References

The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson (2018)
“The danger of a single story” TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)

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