Monday, April 09, 2007
Spring Break Memories: Wonderful Bird
Happy Monday, party peoples! It’s spring break time! To put you in the mood for a productive week or a diverting vacation, here’s a short tale of a seafood meal gone down the wrong way:
I was visiting my friend Jose at his home during spring break. Back at school the dug turds were still frozen to the Philadelphia sidewalks, but Jose lived in a different world altogether – a big beautiful hacienda in a ritzy part of San Juan P.R., where we surfed by day and roamed the colonial streets by night. But one perfect afternoon found us out of our boardshorts and into the island’s version of formalwear: light trousers and a shirt with buttons all the way down. We were going to go to the Pablo Casals Museum’s Recital Hall, an intimate performance space in the old part of town, to hear some baroque chamber music.
The show was to start in half an hour or so - time we intended to spend in a tiny 17th-century plaza of worn stone and tall palms, watching the sun play over the enormous old Spanish fort. It was a warm day and we let the heat seep deep into our bones.
Overhead: a pelican. I didn’t look up, hadn’t seen it – but we knew it had flown above us because a huge load of cloacal excrement, brown and green and reeking of fish, fell suddenly and heavily onto Jose’s shoulder. In volume, it may have been as much as a half a quart; in texture, it was like a watery stew of pre-digested mackerel.
“Shit!,” Jose cried in shock and revulsion. We both stared, amazed, as the substance soaked into his white linen shirt and dribbled heavily down his chest. Then, again, but this time with outrage: “Shit!”
There was a drinking fountain in the little plaza and Jose hustled to it in a desperate attempt to deturdify himself. The visual impact of his soiling was unignorable and the stench was worse, and we were about to go into a very small quiet room full of rich clean people who would undoubtedly notice that one of their number was generously spackled with avian dookie. I guess he got mostly clean because we were let in and were allowed to stay through the whole recital. The music was beautiful; the performance was nuanced and flawless. What I mostly remember, though, was how surprisingly voluminous and odiferous a pelican’s poop can be. Wonderful birds, pelicans.
