"When Alice was forced by the Queen to play a round of croquet, she discovered to her horror that apart from the unevenness of the ground, which in itself was enough to make the game virtually unplayable, there were other challenges too: the balls were curled-up hedgehogs which had to pass underneath soldiers bent over like arches, and for a mallet to hit them they gave her a live flamingo… The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed." This extract from Lewis Carroll gives a very objective description of some of the difficulties faced by anyone wanting, for whatever reason, to handle a flamingo. And there is an inaccuracy: after looking at you with a puzzled expression, the flamingo will turn its head and then, very maliciously and without warning, give you a nasty peck with the sharp edge of its hooked beak, at whatever point it thinks will hurt most. Seeing it, you wonder how it manages to stand up and walk. Even stranger is the way it feeds, with its neck bent and its head upside-down in the shallow water, very low and looking backwards from the level of the feet. And its flight is a mystery of aerodynamics, because it flies with its neck and its feet outstretched, protruding unnaturally far from a relatively small body with narrow and rather short wings. When it is resting it adopts an even more bizarre posture that makes it look like a swastika. One leg drops perpendicularly to the ground, and with that it supports its weight. The other, which is unstiffening itself, forms a right angle diagonally behind it, turned downwards, with the neck forming another right angle, diametrically opposite the foot - in front and pointing upwards. Often visitors who witness these contortions make well-meaning remarks such as: "Ah, the poor thing. What's wrong with its leg? Oh, dear!" It is truly a bird with such a long neck and such long legs in relation to its body that great skill and imaginative technique are required to handle it correctly. The correct technique is as follows: a. Folding: With the left hand you take the neck, just under the head. You hold it steady, taking care of course not to choke the bird. Very quickly, before it has time to get away, its legs still being free, you grab its body with your right hand and tuck it under your armpit (like Alice). After that you fold in its neck gently, hiding its head beneath its wings, in the natural posture for sleep. This makes it thing that it is sleeping, so that it calms down. Having done all this, with the hand that has been freed - the left - (the right holds the body with wings closed, so that the head doesn't pop out again for it to peck you) you fold its feet in such a way that its toes, which are webbed, come into the palm of your left hand, directly beneath its belly. You hold it there. Now, if all is well, the flamingo will be immobilised and you will have your left hand free to do whatever is necessary, e.g. to open a door or a gate to take it into another enclosure… b. Erection (or unfolding): First you allow the bird to set down its feet, holding its body at an appropriate distance above the ground. You release the head when you feel that the feet have reacquired the ability to support its weight and that it has understood where the ground is. You don't let go of its body until you have made sure that the flamingo is fully aware that its feet are touching the ground, that it has familiarised itself with the whereabouts of its body, feet and neck and regained its equilibrium and composure. You take care, while you are getting it back on its feet, to concentrate and be calm, because anxiety is transmitted to the animal, causing it to panic. Don't release it unless you have made sure that it will react normally, i.e. walk slowly and not run, because if it does it could well get tangled up and collapse, injuring its delicate legs in the fall. And naturally if you have to transport a flamingo anywhere you should never put it in a container for extended periods unless the container is tall enough for it to stand upright. Otherwise it will arrive at its destination so numb that it won't be able to get to its feet for hours. As if all this is not enough, flamingos are afflicted with peculiarities that make them even more difficult to manage. They are extremely social animals - they live in flocks often numbering thousands of birds - with the result that the minute they find themselves alone they refuse to eat and soon sicken and die. Nowadays when a wounded flamingo comes in, we immediately fetch other flamingos from among the ones living permanently in the Centre so that they can keep it company, or we put it with them straight away - if its injuries allow of it being left in an open place. This is particularly necessary for adult flamingos. The young ones are fortunately more flexible, and will condescend to be with other species, like storks or swans. The great problem was with our first flamingo. It was on its own, with an entire room to itself, with its broken wing bandaged up. Its depression was growing more obvious every day. It stopped straining the soup we prepared for it with the comb-like filter that it has in its beak and we were forced to feed it with a catheter three times a day. Despite this, it kept losing weight. We tried different courses of treatment with drugs, to no effect. There was no medical problem - it simply felt miserable because without company its life had no meaning, so that it wanted to die. The solution was provided - in a sudden inspiration - by Lewis Carroll, because in the deeper recesses of my memory flamingos have been linked with that specific scene from Alice in Wonderland. I remembered then that in the next story Alice entered a magic world by passing through a mirror. "Why shouldn't the flamingo do the same?" I thought. "Find another world in a mirror?" To be precise, the flamingo needed two mirrors. One on one wall and one on the other, directly opposite. The result? The room was suddenly filled with gorgeous exotic flamingos, as far as the eye could see. Dozens… hundreds…thousands….flamingos to the farthest reaches of the horizon. The improvement was spectacular. The flamingo started eating again and put on weight. It endured the loneliness for as long as was needed for its wing to heal so that it could fly again.