Thomas Bjorkman, a plant scientist at Cornell University, examined the store-bought specimen like a diagnostician, unflinchingly but with a certain compassion.
"An older, beaten-up specimen, like a monarch butterfly, which lives quite a long time, may have flown to Mexico for the winter and can look awful by the time it makes it back, but it can still fly and reproduce," he said.
Revenge narratives go all the way back to the Greeks, but it's the vagina dentata component that sets a specimen like "Alex" apart, as Lemaitre adapts Larsson's blueprint with moves of his own.
The Marine officers in my tent, median age 20 or so, treated this 33-year-old civilian specimen like an exotic pet, an overeducated ibex.
And treats based on supermarket staples -- hello, saltine brickle --compete for affection with more elegant specimens, like a very dignified Scottish shortbread.
According to Nick Smith, the head of the auction house's motorcycle division, the collection reflects the varied taste of an enthusiast rather than an expert and includes diverse specimens like a 1902 Peugeot motorbicycle, a 1917 Harley-Davidson Model F and a 1952 Moto Guzzi Falcone.
The display case in his booth has a few intriguing vintage specimens, like a Patek Philippe from 1917: it was designed for drivers, with the 12 o'clock position at what is usually the 3 o'clock position, easier to spot on a wrist turning a steering wheel.
The high level of sophistication can be seen in specimens like an excessively decorated ad for a 12-color press ("Golding's Chromatic Jobber," circa 1886) that demanded a lot of patience as well as aptitude to achieve the final result.
Men appear infrequently in Woodman's imagery, but an unusually large and corpulent specimen cavorts like a satyr in a series called "Charlie the Model".
But the hyperpolyglot, defined here as someone who knows at least six languages and possibly dozens, is a more enigmatic and freakish specimen, rather like a music prodigy or maths whiz.
"I used to have energy like that," a specimen like myself might be heard saying wistfully between short breaths, indicating some limber teen-ager flying past.
