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carnival float during the annual pageant of the guilds.
The lower jaw, typically, found its way to the museum of natural history. The
remainder of the skull has disappeared, but is probably still lurking in the
waste grounds or private gardens of the cityquite recently, while sailing down
the river, I noticed two ribs of the giant forming a decorative arch in a
waterside garden, possibly confused with the jawbones of a whale. A large
square of tanned and tattooed skin, the size of an Indian blanket, forms a
back cloth to the dolls and masks in a novelty shop near the amusement park,
and I have no doubt that elsewhere in the city, in the hotels or golf clubs,
the mummified nose or ears of the giant hang from the wall above a fireplace.
As for the immense pizzle, this ends its days in the freak museum of a circus
which travels up and down the northwest. This monumental apparatus,
stunning in its proportions and sometime potency, occupies a complete booth
to itself. The irony is that it is wrongly identified as that of a whale, and
indeed most people, even those who first saw him cast up on the shore after
the storm, now remember the giant, if at all, as a large sea beast.
The remainder of the skeleton, stripped of all flesh, still rests on the
seashore, the clutter of bleached ribs like the timbers of a derelict ship.
The contractor's hut, the crane and scaffolding have been removed, and the
sand being driven into the bay
along the coast has buried the pelvis and backbone. In the winter the high
curved bones are deserted, battered by the breaking waves, but in the summer
they provide an excellent perch for the sea-wearying gulls.
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