Custody battle over East London dodo egg

Each morning, intriguing headlines from East London's newspaper, The Daily Dispatch, are plastered on telephone and lamp posts all the way to town. It's kind of hard to see Germans order flak jackets and Condoms make Tutu blush and not buy a paper (or check out the web site).

This morning's headline: Court battle over dodo egg.  

I had read that the East London Museum was home to what is believed to the the world's only dodo egg. It was brought to the museum by Dr. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a naturalist who was the museum's curator from sometime in the 1950's to 1971.  After she died at age 97 in 2004, the niece who inherited her estate initiated proceedings to reclaim the egg (and sell it on eBay?).

Knowing that the egg might disappear back into the family vault (or a private collection), the idea of going to take a peek piqued our interest so we made a trip over to the museum.  We arrived at 3:50 to learn that they were shutting down for the day.  Lights were being turned off and the staff was shuffling toward the door.  Thankfully, our request to see the egg was granted and we spent a few minutes in the gallery:

This is the dodo display - the egg is in the nest.

Upon closer inspection, we learned that this is actually a REPLICA of the egg. The real egg is stored elsewhere in the museum.

The case will be heard on Tuesday - stay tuned.

By the way, Dr. Coutenay-Latimer is best known for her discovery of the preheistoric coelacanth fish in 1938.  There is a sculpture of the fish outside of the museum:

Plans for the weekend: Karaoke at the Fig Tree tonight, Hiking on the Wild Coast tomorrow, and shopping, beach and possibly a boat ride on Sunday.  Our last weekend in Gonubie!