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Queenly Plucking. Patiently, Ostrichman Rose learned all the habits and hazards of his birds.* He managed to keep his flock together, cashed in on each tiny feather boomlet as it appeared. In 1931, the Empress Eugenie hat style started a flurry in feathers. In 1947, Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth helped start the present revival by visiting Oudtshoorn, praising feathers and publicly plucking an ostrich. This year, Manhattan's Walter Florell ("the mood at the moment is to look bold") is trimming hats with Lillian Russell-sized plumes (see cut). But he has tuned them to the 20th Century by coating them with copper, rust and gold lacquers. Other Florell eye openers: one-foot-square feather muffs; a single feather-covered glove, worn shoulder length. That was enough to get Manhattan's Murray Sears, big U.S. feather merchant, to book passage to South Africa last week to buy up all the fine feathers he could find. Predicted Sears: "A big year for the ostrich."
* Rigidly monogamous, a pair of ostriches may spend their full 40-year adult life span together. Easily frightened, the birds, which can run at a 60 m.p.h. clip, sometimes cripple themselves dashing headlong into fences. But in the mating season a male ostrich will attack a man, can disembowel him with a single downward kick of his two-toed foot, whose claw is the size of a railroad spike.