Missing books and birds

This evening I plan to attend a lecture, co-sponsored by the Friends of the Kilbourn Public Library and the Dells Area Historical Society, on passenger pigeons -- once the most numerous birds in North America (some say in the world) but extinct since 1914 when the last known specimen died in a zoo in Cincinnati.

Huge flocks of them used to come to this area where they were hunted by sportsmen who came by the trainloads from Chicago and points east. I recall reading an account of one of these huge roostings in Aldo Leopold's essays about Wisconsin wildlife and conservation, and I wanted to read it again before going to the talk.

I know I re-read the book fairly recently, but neither Tom nor I could locate it anywhere on the bookshelves or elsewhere in the house this morning. Nor can we recall lending it out to anyone. It doesn't really matter. I will just have to listen carefully and learn what I can tonight.

But I do wonder where the book disappeared to ... along with those billions of passenger pigeons.