Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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and artillery were bombarding the Mozhaisk forest section by section,
destroying deposits of crocodile eggs in all the damp ravines. It also
reported that a squadron of aeroplanes had carried out a highly successful
operation near Vyazma, spraying almost the whole district with poison gas,
but there were countless human losses in the area because instead of leaving
it in an orderly fashion, the population had panicked and made off in small
groups to wherever the fancy took them. It also said that a certain
Caucasian cavalry division on the way to Mozhaisk had won a brilliant
victory against hordes of ostriches, killing the lot of them and destroying
huge deposits of ostrich eggs. The division itself had suffered very few
losses. There was a government announcement that if it should prove
impossible to keep the reptiles outside the 120-mile zone around Moscow, the
capital would be completely evacuated. Office- and factory-workers should
remain calm. The government would take the strictest measures to avoid a
repetition of the Smolensk situation, as a result of which, due to the
pandemonium caused by a sudden attack from rattlesnakes numbering several
thousands, the town had been set on fire in several places when people had
abandoned burning stoves and begun a hopeless mass exodus. It also announced
that Moscow's food supplies would last for at least six months and that a
committee under the Commander-in-Chief was taking urgent measures to armour
apartments against attacks by reptiles in the streets of the capital, if the
Red Army and aeroplanes did not succeed in halting their advance.
The Professor read none of this, but stared vacantly in front of him
and smoked. Apart from him there were only two other people in the
Institute, Pankrat and the house-keeper, Maria Stepanovna, who kept bursting