I did. He didn't.

"I think this whole thing is crazy," Rene said, "but since he's a talking bird, you might ask him a few questions. Maybe he's trained to say something else."

"Where is Uncle Izzy's fortune?" I asked, when I had tugged at the dodo's feathers until he opened one eye.

He closed it.

"Do you have a message for me?"

He drew away from me irritably and closed the eye again, ruffling down into his feathers.

"He may be keyed to respond to certain phrases. Try your uncle's name—he obviously knows that," Rene suggested coldly, wanting no part of this but unable to hold down the suggestion.

"My name," I screamed at the somnolent dodo, "is Isadore Summers."

He reared back and pecked the hell out of me.

I picked the book up off the floor and flipped through the bent pages until I found "The Dodo." Maybe there'd be something in that.

"Listen to this, Rene," I said, "and see if you catch anything I might have missed."

Rene looked discomfited, but he didn't stop up his ears.

When I came to the part, "'Tell me what thy lordly name is/On the Night's Plutonian shore....'" the dodo looked up and said, "Isadore."

Clearly, this was it, although I couldn't recall that any of the questions in the poem were to the point.

I got to, "'On the morrow he will leave me/As my hopes have flown before.'/Then the bird said...."

"Ask me more," said the dodo without missing a beat.

I read on, getting excited. "'Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe,/And forget this lost Lenore.'/Quoth the Dodo...."

"Give me more," he supplied, pointing his beak at the alcohol tap.

I gave him another cup and continued, sure that he must be going to say something relevant to Uncle Izzy's fortune.

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