Word: cessna
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...When Hemingway broke camp after five months of hunting and writing and set out for Africa's east coast to fish, he hired Pilot Marsh and his four-place Cessna. Last week Pilot Marsh left Nairobi for an African village named Masindi, planning to circle the spectacular Murchison Falls of the Victoria Nile on the way. But Marsh and the Hemingways never arrived at Masindi. A B.Q.A.C. plane, diverted from its route to search for them, found the Cessna in trees near the falls and reported that there was no sign of life to be seen...
...next day it turned out that indestructible Poppa was still alive. In its forced landing (made to avoid a flock of huge jungle birds), the Cessna had damaged nothing but its undercarriage. Its three occupants clambered down cliffs to the crocodile-infested river, while clouds of mosquitoes whined about them. As night fell, they built a fire to keep curious elephants at bay. One elephant, Hemingway said later, "was silhouetted twelve paces away, listening to my wife snore." When he woke her, she said, " 'I never snore. You've got a fixation about "it.' I said...
...Hemingway said the blue and white Cessna crashed when it dived at low altitude to avoid hitting a flock of flying ibises--jungle birds big enough to smash the canopy of the plane. . ." (N.Y. Times, January 26, 1953, page 25, section...
There was no disagreement, however, that the huge, frenzied birds were intent on wrecking the author's blue and white Cessna. Mrs. Hemingway, who first saw them approaching and pointed them out to the pilot, said she thought nothing of them until she noted the leader--glittering in the African sun--break from formation and head straight for the plane. The other black and white birds immediately followed...
...creatures swooped down on the hedge-hopping Cessna, forcing it to crash-land on an elephant track, or else be demolished by the flock. Both pilot and wife noted that the Ibis leader seemed especially trained for his performance, and speculated that he may have been sent out by some group intent on ridding the world of perhaps the Twentieth Century's most talented author...