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| The Pelican Brief |
A true story A true
story of female explosive laughter when on charter.
While Gaile
and I were chartering in the Caribbean learning all the anchorages
for our guests, we used to take these free
 week-ends
with friends and get lost in paradise just chilling out.
Gaile (my wife of 39 years) is one of those wonderful gentle folk
who people, dogs, cats and birds, are attracted to. When
we were in the Virgin Islands those single girls would gravitate
to "mother" Gaile, so there was forever a bunch of single girls
hanging around our catamaran and the safety of "Mother" Gaile.One July week-end in 1993
the girls decided to rent 8 movies and then we would find a quiet
anchorage where we would hang out for the week-end. We found
our anchorage off Peter Island called little harbor. After
snorkeling most of the morning the 6 girls and myself were sitting
on the trampoline when I realized that water is heavy....There were
many pelicans diving for minnows around our catamaran
and it struck me that for 2-3 seconds pelicans are unable to fly
when their pouches are full of water. Their pouch holds about
3 pints of heavy seawater and small minnows, they purge the water
out of their beaks tilt their heads and swallow their catch.m.m.m.m.
This meant they were vulnerable to
being caught by hand, provided one dived near our catamaran and
I could time it exactly correctly. If I ran off the side of our
catamaran and dived in the air just after the pelican, I would then
flare open my arms and catch the pelican with a beak full of water
and fish..mm..mm..m.."Girls what
would you bet me if I say that I can catch a pelican with
my bare hands in the next few minutes and you can touch the feathers
then I would let it go?" Eeeeeugh what are you
talking about, they all said in total disbelief, impossible.
"OK we have one slab of chocolate for the whole week-end we
would bet you the slab of chocolate". I do not remember
what I promised them if this did not work, I did not tell them how
this was going to go down anyway. I sat and waited for the
right pelican to fly just too close to our catamaran, while I was
waiting they were teasing me "so where is the pelican Mr Hot
Shot?" Wait I said and they teased me even more.
I waited, all the time watching, 10 minutes went by with constant
heckling by those female non-believers, then the right Pelican
was aimed in flight (a dive) at the distance I felt would work.
I was running along the side of the catamaran and just behind the Pelican then in the air, (I was diving) the  pelican
hit the water a second before I did. I hit the water far enough
away from him as not to hurt him but to come up after the initial
underwater dive right where our Mr Pelican was. It was too
late for Mr. Pelican as he emerged with water and fish in his
beak I surfaced right next to him with open arms. His wing
span was far to big to get him moving in time to escape my closing
arms his beak remained full of water and little fish, this pelican
was surprised but no where near as surprised as 6 women sitting
on deck in total disbelief.Then there erupted the loudest
laughter ever emitted by any female and there were 6 of them, they
were cracking up on deck, tears running down their faces, I had
to stop them and say go and get a camera ladies I cannot stay here
all day waiting for you to take these pictures. So these pictures
you see were taken by those non believing lady's on deck. |
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