Eliot House Mantelpiece Wishbones Once Flew from India to England

When C's start running to D's and the little girl is busy every night, drop over to the room of Michael Rothenberg '49 and try some luck at breaking the better half of a wishbone with him. He's got 350 of them in what he calls "the largest collection in the world" draped over his Eliot House fireplace.

He began the enterprise with his brother, Daniel Rothenberg, in grammar school, but he bought out his partner in the eighth grade for a couple of marbles and a quarter. The fowls represented were purely domestic chickens, turkeys, and ducks until he went overseas with the American Field Service in March 1945.

Bones on Mandalay Road

Assigned to the China-India-Burma theater, Rothenberg spent the summer snaring unclaimed feathered wanderers and retaining the bones. "There was a good feed in it occasionally," he recalls with relish.

On the trip home through Egypt, Palestine, England, and Wales, flying denizens of all these places found their way into the Rothenberg game bag, including his largest and most valuable specimen.

Success on Nile

Strolling along on the banks of the Nile, he came across a water carrier consuming the remains of a large Ibis, a North African heron who sports a magnificent bone. A crocodile had beaten the fellahin to the Ibis feast, and the native was about to attack the remains with a large knife, when Rothenberg stayed his hand with "fellow, spare that bone!"

For a moment, the ossuary expert recalled yesterday, the man looked as if he was going to probe Rothenberg for his wishbone, but this murderous impulse was assuaged with a little cash and the prize joined the collection.

All this time, said Rothenberg, his brother had been contributing to the harvest from the Carribean area where he was stationed during the war.

One specimen is still lacking to make the collection complete, admitted Rothenberg yesterday. For months he has been passing the Lampoon building, enviously staring at the magnificent wishbone concealed beneath the plumage of a second theskiornia which adorns the Bow Street tile palacer.