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Flight Test. Fortnight ago, Fleay gave his platypuses a flight test. He put them in grass-lined boxes and took them for a 60-mile ride to Brisbane on a Trans-Australia Airlines DC-3. At Brisbane they seemed cheerful, but when they got back home, they seemed slightly dazed and ignored tempting heaps of wriggling earthworms. Next day Pamela and Paul were back in form, but Paddy kept sticking his head underwater (a sign of distress). When he did not recover his spirits after two days. Fleay liberated him in a nearby river. "Paddy is so sensitive," explained Fleay. "that the trip to New York might easily kill him. We can't take risks like that."
Fleay is still trying, without much hope, to catch a replacement for Paddy. Most of this year's crop of young platypuses are already too mature. Last week, building a platypusary for Pamela's and Paul's trip to the U.S., Fleay was hoping that they would be reconciled to traveling by air. But even air travel will not be carefree. Between Australia and The Bronx, Pamela and Paul will demand—and get —7,000 earthworms, 165 crayfish, 130 chafer grubs and 1,300 meal grubs. By the time they arrive, Fleay estimates, they will have cost the New York Zoological Society about $6,500.