The Big Sister

^{Y a-t-il autre chose ? Pencil and pastel on tone paper, standard metric ‘CM’ size (35×25 cm)}

“I will reward you very handsomely,’ said the Wolf, ‘if you pull that bone out for me.’ The Crane, as you can imagine, was very uneasy about putting her head in a Wolf’s throat. But she was grasping in nature, so she did what the Wolf asked her to do.”

Marion Crane, a working girl, gives in to her impulse of madness and greed by stealing a large wad of bills which she was sent out by her employer to bring to a bank. When leaving the city in her Ford car, she stops at an intersection and is observed by her employer crossing the street in front of her, who gives her a puzzled look when she distractedly greets him, as she had claimed she suffered from a head cold and would go straight to bed after delivering the money to the bank. In the end, on her voyage to the place where here love interest lives, and to whom she would bring her stolen money as a dowry, she falls prey to a mother fixated bird taxidermist who knows very little about birds, except that they eat a tremendous lot, and that they make for better stuffed specimens than beasts, as they are somewhat “passive to begin with”.

Lila Crane, Marion’s sister, sets out to find Marion again in the city of the mighty Phoenix, were Marion travelled in order to build herself a nest, set herself on fire, and renew herself.

This drawing is a dream image where Lila finally meets her sister in the flesh and alive, but transformed into a were-bird, and is given the opportunity to inquire about her large beak and the double-wattle under said beak, which, some people say, has the function of storing little fish and water insects to feed the crane’s offspring with, but which is in truth an ornamental organ which shrinks or elongates, according to the crane’s mood.

^{People point her out 
On the street
“See, that is a good wife, whatever that is!”
And the birds, the ones
Who become hopping things
On entering their nests, sing:}

^{Pee, pee, see, see? A good wife
Is the gyrating flying silky feathered thing,
Which becomes a hopping thing
On entering her nest, and her husband’s
Pride and joy she is!}

^{Whatever she is, a good wife she is!
And whoever hears the birds sing thus,
Or whatever, knows so well what it means
The musical piping, which so resembles
The Whatever That Is Good Wife’s undulating ululations}

^{It means:
Happy in my life with you!}