A story reprinted from The Island's Nautical Scene, Mid December, 1995 (pp. 6-7).

Charter Captain Falls for a Pelican

a true story

by Stan Louden

The powerful bond that we humans have with dolphins is initiated by the sound of those deep gasps of air that we hear when a family of dolphins visits your boat. This urgent breathing sound tells us that these sleek sea creatures, who live in the water that we live on, are truly our close relatives.

They live in the ocean with the elegant simplicity of perfected bodies, while we "primitives" are so dependent upon all the clumsy paraphernalia of yachts, sails, engines, and expensive reverse osmosis water.

Life in the oceans is thousands of times older than life on the land, so ocean life is more diversified and perhaps, ultimately, more advanced than land life. But, since all us land creatures originated in the ocean, water creatures are still our direct relatives, our "first cousins" removed by only a few million years.

This is a mere sparkle of seconds in a universe that has lived through tens of billions of years. And we still sense the physical inheritance in our long-forgotten ocean ancestors. So, this may be why we still feel strong family bonds of "cousin-hood" for many of our fellow sea creatures.

To see this in action you only have to watch those pale-skinned visitors to the Caribbean who go out on a snorkeling expedition. The incredible joy and delight is expressed by all these deprived "city-inmates" at their encounters with ocean life and how they assert human personality characteristics to every new creature who they meet in the water.

Remarks like--

"Myrtle, did ya see that shy little seahorse peeking around that coral head over there? Looks just like Cousin Albert's teenage boy, don'cha think?" And--"Good job; Aunty Gertrude didn't see that parrot fish. Sure as shootin', she'd git some more outlandish ideas about makeup."

Well, these warm feelings and the strong wishes to visit with our "cousins" in the oceans are not restricted to visitors to the Caribbean. Those of us who have been here for years feel these yearnings too . . . even those who work on the water and who often work in the water.

Perhaps these feelings of being only just slightly removed from our fellow "ocean citizens" who share our earthly home is felt even more strongly by those of us who spend every day out on the oceans.

Charter yacht captains in general seem to possess this view, but one charter yacht captain in particular found that he was not content with being a kind of "spectator." His feelings for the ocean's denizens who surrounded his yacht Splendidum at every anchorage were evolving beyond a mere sense of cousin-hood and were taking on "romantic" proportions.

Ya see, Captain Andy wanted "closer contact"; he had this tremendous urge to . . . well, to just hug a pelican. But not just any old pelican. Andy's heart was set on one feathery female in particular--"Penelope the Pelican."

Penelope was a classy little bird. She sat demurely on one of the pointy rock at the edge of a quiet little bay in the northwest corner of The Bight. She may have seemed slightly aloof while she perched all by herself, grooming her dusky, bleached-out grey/brown feathers.

But, actually, like all pelicans, Penelope was just . . . , well, she was not very smart. This came about, ironically, as a result of her successes. Penelope was a big bird and so she had to deal with no real dangers except the annoyance of the hooligan behavior of the gulls when they made their seasonal visits.

With all the fish she could eat available, anytime, and unlimited warmth continuously from the Caribbean sun, Penelope did not exercise those "birdy mental mega-bytes." So, truthfully, Penelope was kinda dumb. But she had personality, instead.

Penelope was cute, coy and very feminine as she perched on her rock, but she was also full of get-up-and-go, too, when she wanted to be.

Well, our intrepid Captain Andy, like all those other "Errol Flynns" who preceded him, had to conger up a plan in order to even get close to his feathery "Juliet."

So, he began to watch Penelope, discretely, out of the corner of his eye, because, even though Captain Andy was an old-fashioned affectionate kind of guy, he was also sort of...shy, too. He watched Penelope's style as she sat on her rock and even admired her ability to stay aloof from the hooligan gulls as they raucously fought each other for every tidbit in the water.

Then, suddenly, Penelope launched off her perch and flapped her great wings in the direction of Splendidum. When she was directly above the school of tiny fish that were hovering in the shade of Splendidum's port hull, she folded her wings back and crashed into the water, almost within reach of our Andy.

Penelope repeated this inelegant maneuver a few more times, each splash bringing her closer to Splendidum and her suitor.

And now, Andy hatched his plan of conquest. He had noticed that each time Penelope crashed into the water to get a beak full of fishy delights, she also got a snoot full of seawater; probably a quart or more. This is a lot of ballast, even for a smart flyer like Penelope. One more dive and Andy felt sure that he would be embracing his pelican/Juliet--the feathery Penelope.

And she was aloft once more; then the wings folded into an "F-16 supersonic cruise-like position" to eliminate aerodynamic lift, and Penelope cannonballed in for another beak full of the fishy treats. But this time, our suitor Captain Andy was in the water too.

He, with great romantic cunning, had unexpectedly surfaced right alongside Penelope, whose beak was now swollen with delectable fishes, the surplus dribbling past her lovely yellow lips, but ballasted down by quarter or so of seawater. And, so Andy made his move.

Captain Andy had surfaced nose-to-beak with fair Penelope, and before she could protest he gently threw his arms around her lovely wet shoulders. Then, being ever so careful of her very delicate lightweight bone structure, he fulfilled all of his passionate fantasies --Captain Andy HUGGED PENELOPE.

Oh, and did I mention that Captain Andy's charter yacht Splendidum had a full complement of charter guests while Andy was fulfilling his romantic reveries? Well, I have it on the best of authority that the peels of hysterical laughter that echoed repeatedly around the Bight that evening during the usual generous rounds of sunset cocktails was the stuff that literary legends are made of.

One of Andy's charter guests, with a poetic flair, suggested, towards the end of cocktail hour, that the port hull of their yacht should be re-named "Penelidum," in honor of this mythic romance, while the starboard hull should continue as "Splendidum."

Thus began the Norman Island myth that explained how star-crossed love had bridged between PENELIDUM and SPLENDIDUM.

DISCUSSION:

Students can summarize in a two-to-three-paragraph one page composition what the introduction of this story tells us about the relative ages of life on land and life in the oceans. What is the basis for the author's suggestion that life in the oceans might be more than that on land?

Students should, through reading or first hand research, be able to name and describe at least three different kinds of the "tiny fish" that pelicans and other sea bird in the Virgin Islands feed on.

Can the student tell from this article which of the fish-eating birds lives in the Virgin Islands all year and which one visits? Can the student name the bird referred to in the article which visits and tell when this bird arrives in the Virgin Islands and when it leaves?

What does the shadow of the boat have to do with the feeding practices of the pelican?

When pelicans dispose of the seawater ballast mentioned in this article, fishermen say they are "straining." Do you understand why they say this? If you were a fisherman in search of fry for fishing, what might this straining tell you about the school of fry in question?

What words and statements in this article hint that persons engaged in these types of encounters with the creatures of nature in the Virgin Islands today are more likely to be visitors than locals?

Does this article give you reason to believe that the story about a pelican "chapping" a tourist at Caneel Bay some years back might be a true one?