The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Recently, I have been really into true crime books. When it comes to true crime stories, sometimes I don't like them as much because I feel like they glorify the killer or crime in the story. Sometimes I think it is a little weird how fascinated people are with serial killers and their stories. I can understand if you are interested in the psychology of what it takes to become a serial killer or interested in investigating what really happened like "The Staircase" or "The People vs. OJ Simpson." But, I don't think many people were thinking of that whenever they learned that Zac Efron was playing Ted Bundy in a new Netflix special...

Every summer growing up, my family would take a trip to New York to visit my mom’s family on Staten Island. During our trip, we would usually take one or two day trips into the city to do touristy things, like eat at the world’s largest Applebee’s in Times Square (I’m ashamed that this happened before). One of the touristy things that we would often do was visit the American Museum of Natural History with my grandpa. On these trips, I have never seen anyone suffer from museum fatigue quite like my grandpa. 

The term “museum fatigue” was first introduced in 1916 by a guy named Benjamin Ives Gilman in The Scientific Monthly, describing the detrimental effect on people who spend too much time looking at collections or exhibits. In the case of my family’s outings to the Museum of Natural History, my grandpa was forced to endure my brothers standing at every exhibit, reading every word in the description, mulling over the information, and talking about it before moving on. This lasted for countless exhibits. Being too young with too short of an attention span, I would often find the nearest bench with my grandpa. While resting our legs, my grandpa would often vent how he believed the earth was only a few thousand years old (what?), what we would do if the museum came to life, and other random natural history hypotheses. Or, we would simply talk about what our escape routes would be if we were to rob the museum of those jewels, that 34-ton meteorite, or dinosaur fossils right behind a roped enclosure. A classic 65-year old grandpa and 8-year old grandson heist, the true crime story of a century where inevitable theories pop up on the internet that an owl attacked someone (go watch “The Staircase” on Netflix).

In my recent true crime mood, I’ve read A Death in White Bear Lake by Barry Siegal which won a Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist

for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book. The book follows the story of a 3-year old boy who was murdered by his abusive adoptive mother in White Bear Lake, Minnesota in 1965. You’d think that I just spoiled the whole book for you, but that fact was practically given within the first three pages. I’m not sure why I kept reading this book after finding out what happened, but alas. The book follows the investigation that was originally not ruled a murder and then takes up the story twenty-one years later. Everyone knew that the mother was abusing her kids, but almost everyone in the community viewed what happened in the mother’s house personal and not their place to say anything. Something that struck me from the book was how terrible everything seems regarding the parenting, the neighbors just letting things happen, and the police and medical examiners being incompetent 50 years ago, yet at the time, everyone viewed what was happening as not something that was out of the ordinary. It makes me wonder what people 50 years from now will view today’s practices and which things will seem painstakingly stupid to them. 

One of the most interesting conservation efforts that I have seen aiming to raise awareness for the preservation of wildlife comes from The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson, a true crime story of a 20-year old American flautist named Edwin Rist who robbed the British Natural History Museum. Edwin Rist was part of a subculture of people: salmon fly tiers who use feathers from exotic birds to tie fishing flies that are supposed to help catch salmon. However, many people in the subculture don’t even fish with the expertly tied ties that they make, including Edwin. Instead, they just view tying flies as an obsessive hobby or an art form. Johnson first came across the mystery of 299 exotic birds stolen from the British Natural History Museum while on a retreat away from his Iraqi refugee non-profit business. 

There are so many aspects of this story that are so weird, yet so interesting. The book contains a ton of information on birds, feathers, and salmon flies dating back to the Victorian-era which was decidedly less interesting. The story includes the discovery of the exotic birds in the Malaysian jungle by A.R. Wallace, the Victorian-era “feather fever” in which exotic birds were turned into hats, the life of Edwin Rist, and even has involvement from the Rothschild family. 

Within the salmon fly tying community, the tiers themselves covet the real feathers from exotic birds because apparently it doesn’t “feel the same” to tie with colored and dyed feathers. However, almost all of the exotic bird species are protected by international laws and extremely difficult to come by—creating a lucrative black market for feathers used for salmon flies. This black market takes place at an annual fly tying expo in New Jersey every year or more frequently on sites like eBay or ClassicFlyTying.com. For every sale of feathers on eBay, the online auction site takes a cut of the sale without restricting the sale from obviously illegal wildlife products. Because of the rarity of the birds needed to tie, Edwin Rist found it logical to simply break into the museum and steal a lifetime supply to not only continue his craft, but also to profit hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling whole birds and individual feathers. According to Edwin, he simply climbed a wall with a suitcase, broke a window, and spent hours piling 299 birds into his suitcase. Then he left and waited for the train for a few hours. All alone. My grandpa and I had no idea it would be that easy to rob a natural history museum. In fact, the museum didn’t even know anything was missing for over a month. 

In trying to recover the missing birds, the museum emphasized that if the birds had their tags cut off, they were worthless to science. On the other hand, the fly tying community, including Edwin, continuously stressed that the birds are worthless just sitting in a museum cabinet. Edwin even went so far as to hint that by selling the museum skins, he reduced the amount of poaching that would occur to meet the demand. Johnson then became obsessed with tracking down the remaining birds through interviews with Edwin and his associate, the leaders of the salmon fly tying community, and flying around the world. In this pursuit, Johnson became the one, the only, "true detective."

Without spoiling the ending, the book had so many random aspects to it that all came together for a really interesting story. The story stretches from a weird Victorian-era subculture to crime and all the way to legal proceedings involving Sacha Baron-Cohen’s cousin testifying. If you’re interested at all in the story, the “This American Life” podcast produced a seven-part series over the story. In the end, one quote from Johnson thematically sums up the story and jumped out at me when I read it: 

“In the war between knowledge and greed, it sure seemed as though greed were winning.” 

When people find this story 50 years from now, I wonder what people will think when a small subculture of people are responsible for decimating entire bird species simply for a hobby, especially since the people never even use the salmon flies to fish. It’s no different than poachers who kill rhinos and elephants for the tusks’ supposed medicinal benefits. Or, simply poachers who kill rare animals just for the thrill of it. In any case, it always seems to be obsessive men doing the harm. Why does a dentist from Ohio need full bird skins that are native to the Malaysian jungle in 2019 for fishing equipment that is never intended to be used for fishing? 

And that's the way I read it.