Marcello Cazzaniga sent me a nice e-mail with 2 those lovely dodo images:

I am Marcello from Italy I always follow your blog, I love Dodo.
I play figure ice skating in Italy, with some other adults like me …we are not so artistic so we use to call us Dodo group, because we are near to the extinction
But our motto is “I can’t fly but I can slide”.
I send you some images of some dodos that I designed for some pins and cards.
I hope you will appreciate them.

Sure I did! And thanks for sharing them Marcello.

Le dodo appartement by  Mai Kangas on Flickr. And now, thanks to Mai, we know where he is living in Mauritius. I should call him.

The ads images are from the following pages of Ads of the World: Bourbon Beer: Music, Bourbon Beer: Picnic and Bourbon Beer: Fishing; and from Flickr: Sa mem’Dodo! uploaded by mwanasimba. For even more ads or photos of La Dodó, visit the Flickr community La Dodo lé la.

Do you remember the DoDo in Bruges post? Well, with the kind help of Allison, now I know that Dodo shop is actually a DoDo boutique by Pomellato:

Dodo’s story started far far away. Dodo is the name of that funny feathered fellow who used to live happily on the island of Mauritius – until extinction caught up with him. But, as happens in only the very best stories, after many, many years, Dodo has come back to life and now he lives all over the world because he has become a symbol of nature that needs protection and of Pomellato’s sweetest collection of jewelry. The Dodo pendants are happy company of animals who speak the language of feelings and emotions. Each Dodo reveals a little bit of who we are and what we want to say. It is a gift that can speak for us if we are a little shy. To give as a gift, or to collect, because Dodo doesn’t like being alone and is always on the lookout for new friends.

But there is more about the Dodo Story:

1995. There’s a new addition to the Pomellato family: Dodo, a sweet ‘n’ easy range of jewellery, with emotions concentrated in a gram of gold. The idea was to create charms that could be worn on their own or all together, whichever takes your fancy. Dodo was an instant, huge success, thanks in part to the message of love and friendship conveyed by each charm.
The comical dodo bird from Mauritius is now extinct on account of indiscriminate hunting and the fact that it couldn’t fly, so Dodo is also a symbol for nature conservation.

That is why the brand has supported many WWF Italia projects right from the outset. It has also inspired and sponsored one of the most innovative competitions in the sector, the Dodo Speed Master, a show jumping event that’s already gained classic status.

Over the years, the Dodo family has become increasingly diverse, with new animal symbols and their messages, and has developed an increasingly well-defined brand identity as the range of jewellery has been
extended. In 1998, the charms were joined by rings and earrings and in 2000 Dodo D. was born, the very first ultra-luxe charms with diamonds.

I don’t need to say that I loved the boutique logo and all the dodo jewellery all over the site. All the pieces are lovely, specially that Dodo D. charm.  Which women wouldn’t love to have a Dodo with diamonds? *Hint hint, nudge nudge*

By the way, I didn’t mention I’m going to Europe for the first time in September, and of course, among the great museums with dodos I’m planning to visit, now I must also visit some of those Dodo boutiques in Belgium, Netherlands, France, UK and maybe Germany.  I hope the Dodo silver charm fits on my budget.

For more images of dodos from DoDo, including some cheerful special Christmas images, click on the galleries below. And if you enjoyed DoDo’s beautiful creations, check its Facebook page.

We’ve been working feverishly around the clock on this new tool which will allow you to age and de-age people, places and things from any browser with Flash 9 enabled.

Here’s a video of Dodo in action:

Dodo is incredibly simple to use: Just upload an input picture, choose between different settings that might affect the aging process (i.e. amounts of alcohol and tobacco consumed), set a year and hit generate. Obviously results will vary, but under strenuous laboratory analysis we have found a margin of error of only +-11% (unprecedented performance for time machines in general, let alone web-apps). [...] Dodo can also be used on scenery. For example, Dodo changed this scene from an ordinary spring landscape to winter, using Dodo’s built-in database of geographically accurate weather history.

Smart: Dodo: Open your mind. >>Smart limited two. Extremely rare to see.

The dodo bird was in the main page of Desciclopédia, the Portuguese version of Uncyclopedia (a funny, and not trustful for sure, version of Wikipedia). It says: “December 1st – Dodô, endangered.”

There is no article for the dodo bird, just the main page for the word Dodô, which says about the dodo bird: Pássaro Dodô, um pombo anabolizado já extinto e ninguém se importa com ele, porque era feio e cagava pra caramba. (“Dodo bird, an anabolized extinct pigeon and nobody cares about him, because he was ugly and he used to s**t a lot.”)

Not nice or good enough, however the Uncyclopedia has an article about the Dodo bird, following the same funny-bizarre line:

Thought to be extinct, the Dodo was one of the most vicious bird ever to walk the face of the earth. When the first european settlers came to the Mauritius, they brought along with them livestocks like pigs, chicken and dogs. The pigs was quickly to find the dodo bird’s eggs to be very tasty.

This prompted the Dodo Attack of 1598 that killed all of the settler’s livestock but one chicken. Which was then auctioned and sold to Oscar Wilde’s great great grandfather for $5. The nutrition from that one chicken singlehandedly brought him back from the brink of death. Starving, the first settlers were then resorted to cannibalism, and ate their colleagues in this order: Teachers, pianists then peasants. The officials were spared to coordinate the killings.

When the next ship arrived in Mauritania, they were quickly besieged by the settlers, and were quickly defeated. They were up for the boilers until the captain suggested that the settlers hunt the dodo birds instead. It prompted the D’oh D’oh Act of 1601. In which the captain of the ship HMS Mauritanian Death was appointed leader of the settler and was given the task to eliminate the threat of the Dodo.

The Empire Strikes Back under the leadership of the captain, whose name was lost to the ages but the nickname Dundee. Unbeknownst to him, the dodos, who walks on land most of the time owns a secret X-Wing capabilities to fly of in a moment’s notice and divebombs any direct offensive the Empire’s men execute. The first and second waves resulted in 75% loss of troops on the HMS Mauritanian Death. Captain Dundee then escaped to the ship along with all the rest of the settlers and resorted to carpet bombing the mauritanian island, killing most of the dodo’s population, and decimating a large part of the forest which was then used by the French to conduct nuclear weapons demonstrations to sell bombs to the Arabs in 1975. Captain Dundee then commanding the roasting of every dodo beast left on the island and stuffed their skins with wood fillings. Two is known to survive to modern times. One of them was destroyed in order to conduct a DNA test. The only stuffed dodo left in this world was stolen in December 2005 from the Louvre and has not yet been recovered.

Today, the dodos are regarded to be extinct. And because the D’oh D’oh Act of 1601 is still in effect across the British empire, every found dodos are to be extinguished promptly to preserve the unity of the empire.

And that’s not the whole article, there are more if you are brave enough to read it.

Do-Do Bird by Tattoo Andy. BTW, that’s not the first dodo tattoo I found. There are more dodo fans that we can image. Maybe I need to have my own dodo tattoo.

Update: I think Andy is no longer working on Off the Map Tattoo, and that’s why his page was removed.

Through those years I learnt that dodos also inspired an expression for things that are going to disappear: “the way of the dodo”. The says the expression “way of the Dodo” means: Something that is pass or is no longer seen or used. Not bad for a dictionary that usually suggests the alternative meanings. According to Wikipedia:

The dodo’s significance as one of the best-known extinct animals and its singular appearance has led to its use in literature and popular culture to symbolize a concept or object that will or has become out of date, as in the expression “dead as a dodo” or “gone the way of the dodo”.

The Way of the Dodo is also a LA based rock band formed by Ben Zenk, Gerry Hirschfeld, Jake Riggle, Dylan Durboraw and Jesse Bivona. The band has a MySpace page with songs and videos, and a Facebook page (where I discovered it).

Dodos Are Forever is a musical for children in the 8-14 age range. It is based on the book, of the same title, by Dick King-Smith. Mr. King-Smith very kindly gave his permission for the piece to be premiered by the pupils of Comberton Middle School, Kidderminster in June 1999. There is a “Dodos’ Song” midi version on the page.