“ The two of them had fallen into the habit of bartering knowledge whenever she visited. He schooled her in jazz, in bebop and exotic bossa nova, playing his favorites for her while he painted Slim Gaillard, Rita Reys, King Pleasure, and Jimmy Giuffre stabbing the air with his brush when there was a particular passage he wanted her to note. In turn, she showed him the latest additions to her birding diary her sketches of the shorteared owl and American wigeon, the cedar waxwing and late warblers. She explained how the innocentlooking loggerhead shrike killed its prey by biting it in the back of the neck, severing the spinal cord before impaling the victim on thorns or barbed wire and tearing it apart. "Good grief," he'd said, shuddering. "I'm in the clutches of an avian Vincent Price. ”
- Tracy Guzeman- Copy
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