Posted by Ed Kiser on April 03, 2006 at 19:02:14 from 152.163.101.7 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Re: Gibber and Polly posted by Lyn (in CA too) on April 03, 2006 at 16:18:33:
There are flocks of parakeets congregating in the trees around here (30 minutes NW of Ft Lauderdale, South Florida). I live 15 miles inland from the sea, but we watch pelicans diving into a small lake near my house. There are cormorants there as well, with just their heads sticking out, then they sit on a coral rock by the shore and hold their wings out, "drying their laundry." No Swans like the Lake District. Many ducks of assorted brands. They eat right out of my hand. Sea Gulls, herons, white ibis, all add to the flavor of just sitting out by my pool and watching nature floating by.
By the front door of a local eatery featuring sea food (Red Lobster) is a large potted plant. In that pot a duck made its nest, laid its eggs, sat there, as customers walked by in touching distance on their way to the restaurant. If anybody reached, it was met by hissing, but the mother duck did not give up her nest. Her chicks hatched and were often seen parading about that parking lot. It became the thing to do to save a few french fries and toss them to the duck and her little ones on our way out. It is an amazingly public location for a nest, but it just shows how aclimated to being around people the wild life has become.
We have monkeys in the Everglades, since the hurricane wrecked a zoo in the Miami area. Those refugees from their shattered habitat made the best of the opportunity and provide entertainment to the tourists roaring by in their airboats (a flat platform, with turned up front, with an airplane engine [VERY NOISY] and prop at the rear, and a few seats up front, that skims over the shallows and low grassy areas of the swamp). Those monkeys throw you-know-what at the 'gaitors, but are smart enought to stay well out of harms way of those prehistoric monsters of horror. Now all we need is a nest of Great Northerns...
And speaking of parrots...
I am glad that on that fateful voyage to Horseshoe Bay that they left the parrot in charge of the camp on WCI in his cage instead of bringing him along, as when the accident occured, that cage would not have floated.
The parrot did not play all that much of a role in these stories. We met it in SA on the houseboat, and it became a reward to Titty for finding the treasure, and it seemed to fit the image of "retired pirate". It went along for the SD adventure, where it seems that its main job was to squawk from within the hidden PD cave when the Amazons came charging the camp only to find everybody gone, and then to later on, catch a ride on the stretcher during the return trip with the wounded Roger. John did build a pillar of stone for the cage in Swallowdale. It seems that the parrot was essentially ignored for the rest of the stories, maybe "visiting relations in the zoo", like Gibber.
But that parrot did provide the green feathers for the Amazons to use on their arrows. The arrows were only used in their initial encounter with the Swallows on WCI, and again in Horseshoe Cove, to shoot a message using an arrow to John from the Launch. And before these stories even began, those green feathers were the object of a houseboat raid by the Amazons who burgled the place.
The monkey served only one purpose, and that was in one of the "made up" stories (Missee Lee), and that was when the monkey dropped a lighted cigar into the fuel tank and burned their boat. It did provide some humor in the rest of the ML story, but that was not a "real" story anyway.
So much for the monkey and the parrot. They became "unused" rather quickly.
There were enough characters in these stories for the author to manage anyhow, which is really quite a feat that he so successfully accomplished. He did so well "draw" these characters for us to the point that we feel we "know" them quite well. It made them become so "real" in our minds. And they still are that way.
Enough of this "thinking out loud..."
Ed Kiser, South Florida