A jet aircraft on a cloudless night began its landing flightpath twenty miles due east from the airport. For the first five miles of its descent the jet noise disturbed no-one. At the sixth mile, an ornithologist birdwatching on a reservoir was irritated by the jet-noise enough to give the aircraft a quick glance. He turned into a swan.
At the seventh mile, a naturalist and his wife, whilst bolting the back door of their kitchen before going to bed, saw the aircraft through the net curtains and were turned into crows. At the eight mile, four children in a school dormitory saw the aircraft through a skylight and turned into herons. At the ninth mile, seven night-nurses in an old people's home saw the plane from the staff canteen and they turned into swallows. At the tenth mile, twenty-one members of eight families saw the plane and turned into gulls. By the nineteenth mile, twenty-four thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one people in two towns, four villages and a camping site had seen the plane. Most of them had turned into penguins. When the plane exploded on the airstrip, a cassowary with a purple beak stepped from the wreckage and checked himself into the V.I.P. lounge.