I Threatened You, Dear Writers
You Didn’t Write; You Didn’t Call
No, no! It’s just that this Animal Talker story is a great one. Stuff that really happened, to me! Pete is one of those larger-than-life characters, and since I have no way to contact him right now, I’ll say only good things. Which covers 90% of who he is anyway.
I’m not going to fancy-format this article. It’s just a storybook story. You want a fancy photo? Lessee . . .
So way over there on Earth, Pete and I are walking to the Gaviota Pier, in Santa Barbara. Y’know, a funny thing looking at that picture. I actually worked for NASA a couple years after Pete and I walked to the pier. Small world, but I wouldn’t want to fly there.
OK. As that first pretty picture showed, Pete and I had walked to the Gaviota Pier from our semi-rural homes in Goleta, California. I might as well get an “aside” over with now, so we can put it aside. Gaviota is one place the Japanese attacked after Pearl Harbor. There were oil fields up in the foothills. The ‘Japs,’ as they were called, shelled the hills pretty inaccurately from offshore submarines. This has nothing to do with animal talking, but still . . . out on a pier where not long ago artillery shells passed above? Hmm . . . well, it stuck in our minds a bit.
We walked down to the pier. From our neighborhood, that was only 5 or 10 miles. I don’t remember which. We carried a fishing pole with line and one hook. No bait, no canteen of water, no food. Well, we wore shoes, if that relates.
The pier was pretty ancient and partly in ruins. I think the Exxon (? Pretty sure, Exxon) oil spill created a shutdown. So we were in a wilderness of a sort.
At the pier Pete scrambled down onto the pilings and grabbed a mussel. He cracked it on a rock and took the meat and put it on the hook. He came back up on the pier and we walked out over the ocean (Pacific, ok?). I threw out the baited hook and leaned the pole against the railing. We weren’t fishing for anything important . . .
Out on some pilings with no decking, or very little, was a small clutch of seabirds. Four gulls and one sleek, black cormorant. I said to Pete, “Oh Pete. Look at that cormorant. It’s the most beautiful bird on Earth.”
He said, “Would you like to hold it?” Well, I knew Pete, and this was animal-talker talk. So I said yes.
Pete ducked under the rails, walked out to the cormorant, and picked it up. Just like it was a chicken or a small child — just tucked under his arm as he came back to me.
He handed it to me and I held it. It weighed more than I expected, but at least was calm like it got handed around all the time. Which cormorants don’t. They stay busy flying from Alaska to Argentina, or wherever they go. They can’t rest: the Pacific is a huge ocean with few pit stops.
After a few minutes Pete told the bird he was free to go. So he flew from my arms. I’d say I was surprised . . . but I’d already seen Pete with cows, deer, and hummingbirds. How mystical! I was already a scientist by then, and knew that there was no such thing as an animal talker.
So much for science.
Oh wait! The fishing line — I almost forgot. During the whole adventure, the bait caught a ronki, which is a junk fish that looks like a trout. We’d noticed it, but were busy with a cormorant. When we were ready to leave, we had a fourteen-inch sand shark on. I reeled it in, and lost the ronki inside the sand shark, that’s to say, they both fell into the Pacific and left us a clean hook.
Thank you.
Fred
