Halloween Weekend, M.A.U.S., and the Pelican
Christy and I went to the beach for Halloween. Actually, we went to the beach to escape what we’ve come to expect of Halloween; a night of not enough children in costume, teenagers in no costumes with garbage sacks scouring the neighborhood for free candy, drunken revelry, and girls dressed as slutty demons, slutty angels, slutty nurses, slutty witches, and slutty sluts, with their hands tucked firmly into their armpits and a frown of discomfort when they realize that booze plus the ten square inches of fabric they have on will not keep them warm. Instead, we invited Karen, Becky, and Molly to join us at the condo for a weekend of cheap horror movies, home-cooked food, and waves on the beach. Surprisingly, we got a whole lot more than that, too. Here’s what happened.
Friday, I took about five hours off from work and picked Christy up from work around one in the afternoon. We’d already done the majority of the packing we’d needed to do to get ready; all we had to do was go home, eat lunch, do a few last-minute housekeeping chores, and then we could leave for Panama City.
Karen and Molly had left the night before, getting lost along the way and going about an hour out of their way, ending 60 miles north of Destin and having to double back along Hwy 90 for thirty minutes to find the condo. Becky had gone down even earlier, somehow making it down with no detours.
The drive down was uneventful, filled with excited conversation about beaching, future plans, autumn. Columbus had been heavy with pregnant clouds that occasionally misted us with cold rain as we drove south, but around Dothan the clouds began to disperse and we began to see blue sky. By the time we reached Panama City, the sun was out and we were practically sweating.
The girls had nestled into the condo spreading flip-flops, magazines, and snacks everywhere. The fridge was packed with beer and covered dishes. Christy and I threw our stuff into the master bedroom and got comfortable.
Molly was sick and had barricaded herself on one end of the couch, surrounded by crumpled tissues, cough syrup, and blankets. Karen and Becky buzzed about the kitchen, alternately stuffing the fridge full of food or making room incrementally by removing a beer here or there. We made one foray over to the Winn-Dixie to get some essentials (beer, ice cream) and returned to the condo.
The yellow flag was up and blowing fiercely in the wind. The waves crashed so hard you could hear them with all the doors closed. The clouds were moving fast, pushing northeast; crowding the coast with captured warmth that would be blasted away when the sky eventually cleared. This was the last hurrah, the final countdown. In the evening, Becky convinced me to go down to the beach and get in the water. The air was cool, but the water was warm. We let the waves push us around until the sky grew dark and Christy and Karen came to the water’s edge to fetch us.
The rest of the night was spent watching Interview with a Vampire and eating delicious food and drinking. The girls painted nails, emptied beer bottles and bowls of Ben & Jerry’s, and mused over the pros and cons of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas. Later on we settled in to watch Psycho. During which the girls flagged and one by one went to bed, including Christy and me. Christy made it up to the scene where Arbogast gingerly grills Norman about Marion’s disappearance, I turned off the T.V. when they cut to the sheriff.
The next morning I was the last one out of bed. The girls were up; Becky had already been out of the house for a morning walk and had come back to nap. Karen was up for a cigarette, and she and Molly were gearing up for the Iowa/ Indiana game. Molly changed shirts and stayed in her dark blue Iowa shirt all day long. I had little interest in the game. What held my interest, however, was watching Molly watch the game. She would scream, curse, beat the couch, and throw her phone. She did warn us she’d do it, but I don’t think any of us really understood to the extent she’d be into the game. Christy and I busied ourselves with food, trying to maintain our flagging interest in the game for the next few hours. We could not, so we excused ourselves.
Christy and I napped and then showered, returning to the game to find Iowa had come back from the precipice of defeat to a sizeable lead in the fourth quarter. Molly had been mollified. Only once did she raise her voice to utter an f-bomb, directed at some inconsequential action of some player hundreds of miles away. Iowa had won, Molly had nearly lost her voice, but she was happy, and seemed to be getting better. Ah, the healing powers of football.
Also, Jesse was there. Jesse had wanted to see Karen before he deployed and he drove down and spent the night that night. He and Becky went on a booze run and brought back the makings for a concoction called ‘mojo’, which consisted of pineapple juice, alcohol, and one beer. It sounded nasty, smelled, nasty, and Jesse and Becky drank all of it. Karen pointed out the dolphins, and we watched them swim along the sand bar west to east. I counted eight. Christy said she saw a young dolphin jump out of the water.
As Halloween afternoon wound down, Christy and I started watching Night of the Living Dead with interest. I’d never seen it, and neither had she. Jesse was keen on the remake, and repeatedly said so the drunker he got, to the point where he’d mention it and we’d say, “Really? The remake of this movie right here? And the people look exactly the same, except the one you saw was in color, it’s just the car that’s different? Is that what you were going to say?”
We got about thirty minutes into the movie when Karen spied a pelican walking along the shoreline and called me out to take a look. It was moving slowly, its right wing cocked at a funny angle. Karen had watched it move slowly all the way down the beach without flying. It was clearly hurt. We went downstairs to investigate.
The pelican was walking east, and when it saw us come out onto the walkways, it actually began moving toward us. It came within five feet of me, opening its beak slightly, as if to say something. Its right wing had a strange break in where the wing met its shoulder, as if it had been caught it fishing line and had struggled to break free. It kept moving toward me, climbing up onto the fencing in the sandbank, feebly waving its broken wing for balance.
The pelican moved closer, getting between me and the condos. It wasn’t threatened by us at all. In fact, it seemed to want us to investigate its wound. I got as close as two feet away and leaned in to examine the break, and the pelican as patient with me.
By this time, we were communicating directly with the people in the condo above the walkway, asking them to call animal control or the fish and wildlife department. Animal control would not respond to a live animal call.
Some other folks came walking down the beach and stopped to offer some comments. “Oh yeah, we’d seen it walking up and down the beach since Thursday. I’ve called animal control but no one will come out. I live here and pay taxes. I’m going to write a letter to the newspaper. Someone should come and help this poor thing!” Her partner chimed in, “I even picked it up. It’s light.“
Christy managed to get in touch with a local animal hospital in the PCB area. While she was on the phone, Becky brought out an open can of tuna to try and feed the pelican. The bird nearly toppled over trying to get what was in the can, so we dumped the tuna out onto a paper plate. It wanted the tuna, but we just couldn’t get the food into its gullet without braving its pointed beak.
I ran back to the house, threw on jeans and shoes, and brought the Saturn around and backed it up as close as possible to the walkway. Christy was trying to feed the pelican large chunks of tuna by hand, but to no avail. The bird would crane its neck up, but inevitably miss, and the tuna would hit the sandy boardwalk, unusable. The pelican looked tired and hungry. Christy had the address of the clinic; all we had to do was get the pelican there. So, carefully, gently, I picked it up. The pelican was so light. It was like holding an inside-out downy pillow.
We moved carefully over to the car, opened the back and the pelican and I got inside. I had wrapped the bird in a towel so it wouldn’t flap around and held it carefully under my left arm. I secured its beak in the other end of the towel with my free hand. The pelican protested a little, but grew limp as we pulled away from the condo.
The next thirty minutes were a stressful mix of anxiety, fear, and disappointment. Christy drove, Becky attempted to coordinate directions with the person at the clinic, and I help onto the pelican. The pelican calmed down enough that I felt it was safe to let its beak go, and the pelican used it to probe the windows. It realized it was confined and grew upset. I held it firmly under my left arm and made shushing noises until it called down again. Its neck was so soft, its heart beat so hard. The woman on the phone with Becky didn’t seem to know where we were or how to get us to where we needed to be. The three of us were talking to the phone at once, as if that would help at all. The pelican eyed each one of us as we spoke, alert but tired.
We got to the area we were supposed to be near and had to call back for directions three more times just to get to the Breeze Animal Clinic. It was closed. No one was there. We called the person back to let us in, and she informed us that we just needed to go around back and put the bird in a dog pen until someone could come and take a look at it. Christy was pissed. She cursed at the phone until someone else came on the line and explained our situation. Here we were at a dark emergency animal clinic, expecting someone to meet us at the door, never being told no one was there, being given terrible directions, wasting time trying to get here, all the while holding an injured and agitated pelican.
It nearly broke my heart to leave it in a chain-link cage with a concrete floor with no water or food. The pelican was happy to be out of my arms and began preening and looking around the cage immediately upon being let out of the towel. As Christy wound down her tirade and the other person on the end of the phone acquiesced, we realized that this was the best we could do. Christy was promised someone would be by to check on the pelican in the morning. We got back in the car, which smelled like tuna and pelican, and drove back to the condo.
On the way back we were utterly shocked at the level of incompetence we’d run into in one night. First, it was the people on the beach- you see an injured animal on the beach for three days and you don’t do anything but pick it up?! Why the hell didn’t they take it somewhere when something was open? Second, the city- how can a city like Panama City Beach not have a 24-hour emergency rescue for animals? Where was the fish and wildlife department? If animal control wasn’t responsible for living, injured animals, you’d think they’d at least be able to get us in touch with someone who was! Thirdly, the vet- If you’re going to man the phones for a vet’s office, you’d better damn well know how to get someone there without having them run all over the place. Those extra minutes being lost could’ve cost a life. And how dare they give us the impression someone was going to be there, waiting for us to arrive, when the doors were locked and the lights were out the whole time?!
We arrived back at the condo and I said, “Who has two thumbs and smells like pelican? This guy!”, and pointed at myself with my thumbs. It wasn’t funny, but made me feel better. Sure enough, Christy got a call from Fish & Wildlife asking where the injured bird was and when he could come out to get it. I changed clothes just in time for drunk Jesse and drunk Becky to coerce me into going swimming in the dark.
The waves were just as strong but so was the wind, which had changed its mood from cool and buoyant to bitter and cutting. Drunk Becky and drunk Jesse had fun for a minute or two but lost interest as the cold cut into their buzz. We all pulled out of the water and beat a hasty retreat up the cold, lunar sand and into the waiting warmth of the condo.
Christy and I finished watching Night of the Living Dead since it had come on again. It was good. We all ate chicken parmesan that Susi had prepared for us. It was delicious. Drunk Becky fell asleep and we all watched her sleep because she had her feet up in a chair, as if she was just lounging and not snoring. Drunk Jesse also fell asleep sitting up in a chair and began slowly pouring his mojo on the floor as the cup dipped in his relaxed grip. After getting up, Becky quickly fell asleep in her bed, after being directed away from the master bedroom and then the front door. Drunk Jesse moved to the couch, ousting Karen and Molly, and instantly fell asleep. After her catnap, Becky came out and joined us again. At around midnight we all said goodnight and went to bed.
Sunday came bright and cool. The wind had finally pushed out all the clouds, and the Gulf was a hard, deep blue that cut into the cornflower color of the sky. The girls were up, milling around, eating. We spent the morning hours watching television and straightening up the condo. Thanks to Paula Dean, Karen argued Molly argued over the appropriate amount of butter that should be used when cooking greens (a whole stick), and Molly retorted by saying she’s never had anything green at Karen’s house. Jesse had apparently disappeared in the night, because he was nowhere to be found.
I had to urge Christy to pack and get on the road. I think it was especially hard for her because Karen and Becky planned to stay well into the afternoon, and it made her jealous. Molly wanted to leave around lunchtime, too, because she had to get back to Columbus for a bible study that evening. We managed to get out of the condo and on the road at about one in the afternoon, Daylight Savings Time Eastern Standard One, and after gassing up got on the road.
Molly followed us back through the scatterings of random sandy towns until we reached Dothan, at which point Molly put her foot down and took off. It took all I had in the Saturn to keep up with her. Thanks to her, though, we made it back into Columbus by about four in the afternoon.
The rest of the evening we spent fighting with the plumbing and laziness. I developed a headache that made me sensitive to light and nauseous, so I turned off my video game and went to bed at about 9:30. That was our weekend.
Friday, I took about five hours off from work and picked Christy up from work around one in the afternoon. We’d already done the majority of the packing we’d needed to do to get ready; all we had to do was go home, eat lunch, do a few last-minute housekeeping chores, and then we could leave for Panama City.
Karen and Molly had left the night before, getting lost along the way and going about an hour out of their way, ending 60 miles north of Destin and having to double back along Hwy 90 for thirty minutes to find the condo. Becky had gone down even earlier, somehow making it down with no detours.
The drive down was uneventful, filled with excited conversation about beaching, future plans, autumn. Columbus had been heavy with pregnant clouds that occasionally misted us with cold rain as we drove south, but around Dothan the clouds began to disperse and we began to see blue sky. By the time we reached Panama City, the sun was out and we were practically sweating.
The girls had nestled into the condo spreading flip-flops, magazines, and snacks everywhere. The fridge was packed with beer and covered dishes. Christy and I threw our stuff into the master bedroom and got comfortable.
Molly was sick and had barricaded herself on one end of the couch, surrounded by crumpled tissues, cough syrup, and blankets. Karen and Becky buzzed about the kitchen, alternately stuffing the fridge full of food or making room incrementally by removing a beer here or there. We made one foray over to the Winn-Dixie to get some essentials (beer, ice cream) and returned to the condo.
The yellow flag was up and blowing fiercely in the wind. The waves crashed so hard you could hear them with all the doors closed. The clouds were moving fast, pushing northeast; crowding the coast with captured warmth that would be blasted away when the sky eventually cleared. This was the last hurrah, the final countdown. In the evening, Becky convinced me to go down to the beach and get in the water. The air was cool, but the water was warm. We let the waves push us around until the sky grew dark and Christy and Karen came to the water’s edge to fetch us.
The rest of the night was spent watching Interview with a Vampire and eating delicious food and drinking. The girls painted nails, emptied beer bottles and bowls of Ben & Jerry’s, and mused over the pros and cons of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas. Later on we settled in to watch Psycho. During which the girls flagged and one by one went to bed, including Christy and me. Christy made it up to the scene where Arbogast gingerly grills Norman about Marion’s disappearance, I turned off the T.V. when they cut to the sheriff.
The next morning I was the last one out of bed. The girls were up; Becky had already been out of the house for a morning walk and had come back to nap. Karen was up for a cigarette, and she and Molly were gearing up for the Iowa/ Indiana game. Molly changed shirts and stayed in her dark blue Iowa shirt all day long. I had little interest in the game. What held my interest, however, was watching Molly watch the game. She would scream, curse, beat the couch, and throw her phone. She did warn us she’d do it, but I don’t think any of us really understood to the extent she’d be into the game. Christy and I busied ourselves with food, trying to maintain our flagging interest in the game for the next few hours. We could not, so we excused ourselves.
Christy and I napped and then showered, returning to the game to find Iowa had come back from the precipice of defeat to a sizeable lead in the fourth quarter. Molly had been mollified. Only once did she raise her voice to utter an f-bomb, directed at some inconsequential action of some player hundreds of miles away. Iowa had won, Molly had nearly lost her voice, but she was happy, and seemed to be getting better. Ah, the healing powers of football.
Also, Jesse was there. Jesse had wanted to see Karen before he deployed and he drove down and spent the night that night. He and Becky went on a booze run and brought back the makings for a concoction called ‘mojo’, which consisted of pineapple juice, alcohol, and one beer. It sounded nasty, smelled, nasty, and Jesse and Becky drank all of it. Karen pointed out the dolphins, and we watched them swim along the sand bar west to east. I counted eight. Christy said she saw a young dolphin jump out of the water.
As Halloween afternoon wound down, Christy and I started watching Night of the Living Dead with interest. I’d never seen it, and neither had she. Jesse was keen on the remake, and repeatedly said so the drunker he got, to the point where he’d mention it and we’d say, “Really? The remake of this movie right here? And the people look exactly the same, except the one you saw was in color, it’s just the car that’s different? Is that what you were going to say?”
We got about thirty minutes into the movie when Karen spied a pelican walking along the shoreline and called me out to take a look. It was moving slowly, its right wing cocked at a funny angle. Karen had watched it move slowly all the way down the beach without flying. It was clearly hurt. We went downstairs to investigate.
The pelican was walking east, and when it saw us come out onto the walkways, it actually began moving toward us. It came within five feet of me, opening its beak slightly, as if to say something. Its right wing had a strange break in where the wing met its shoulder, as if it had been caught it fishing line and had struggled to break free. It kept moving toward me, climbing up onto the fencing in the sandbank, feebly waving its broken wing for balance.
The pelican moved closer, getting between me and the condos. It wasn’t threatened by us at all. In fact, it seemed to want us to investigate its wound. I got as close as two feet away and leaned in to examine the break, and the pelican as patient with me.
By this time, we were communicating directly with the people in the condo above the walkway, asking them to call animal control or the fish and wildlife department. Animal control would not respond to a live animal call.
Some other folks came walking down the beach and stopped to offer some comments. “Oh yeah, we’d seen it walking up and down the beach since Thursday. I’ve called animal control but no one will come out. I live here and pay taxes. I’m going to write a letter to the newspaper. Someone should come and help this poor thing!” Her partner chimed in, “I even picked it up. It’s light.“
Christy managed to get in touch with a local animal hospital in the PCB area. While she was on the phone, Becky brought out an open can of tuna to try and feed the pelican. The bird nearly toppled over trying to get what was in the can, so we dumped the tuna out onto a paper plate. It wanted the tuna, but we just couldn’t get the food into its gullet without braving its pointed beak.
I ran back to the house, threw on jeans and shoes, and brought the Saturn around and backed it up as close as possible to the walkway. Christy was trying to feed the pelican large chunks of tuna by hand, but to no avail. The bird would crane its neck up, but inevitably miss, and the tuna would hit the sandy boardwalk, unusable. The pelican looked tired and hungry. Christy had the address of the clinic; all we had to do was get the pelican there. So, carefully, gently, I picked it up. The pelican was so light. It was like holding an inside-out downy pillow.
We moved carefully over to the car, opened the back and the pelican and I got inside. I had wrapped the bird in a towel so it wouldn’t flap around and held it carefully under my left arm. I secured its beak in the other end of the towel with my free hand. The pelican protested a little, but grew limp as we pulled away from the condo.
The next thirty minutes were a stressful mix of anxiety, fear, and disappointment. Christy drove, Becky attempted to coordinate directions with the person at the clinic, and I help onto the pelican. The pelican calmed down enough that I felt it was safe to let its beak go, and the pelican used it to probe the windows. It realized it was confined and grew upset. I held it firmly under my left arm and made shushing noises until it called down again. Its neck was so soft, its heart beat so hard. The woman on the phone with Becky didn’t seem to know where we were or how to get us to where we needed to be. The three of us were talking to the phone at once, as if that would help at all. The pelican eyed each one of us as we spoke, alert but tired.
We got to the area we were supposed to be near and had to call back for directions three more times just to get to the Breeze Animal Clinic. It was closed. No one was there. We called the person back to let us in, and she informed us that we just needed to go around back and put the bird in a dog pen until someone could come and take a look at it. Christy was pissed. She cursed at the phone until someone else came on the line and explained our situation. Here we were at a dark emergency animal clinic, expecting someone to meet us at the door, never being told no one was there, being given terrible directions, wasting time trying to get here, all the while holding an injured and agitated pelican.
It nearly broke my heart to leave it in a chain-link cage with a concrete floor with no water or food. The pelican was happy to be out of my arms and began preening and looking around the cage immediately upon being let out of the towel. As Christy wound down her tirade and the other person on the end of the phone acquiesced, we realized that this was the best we could do. Christy was promised someone would be by to check on the pelican in the morning. We got back in the car, which smelled like tuna and pelican, and drove back to the condo.
On the way back we were utterly shocked at the level of incompetence we’d run into in one night. First, it was the people on the beach- you see an injured animal on the beach for three days and you don’t do anything but pick it up?! Why the hell didn’t they take it somewhere when something was open? Second, the city- how can a city like Panama City Beach not have a 24-hour emergency rescue for animals? Where was the fish and wildlife department? If animal control wasn’t responsible for living, injured animals, you’d think they’d at least be able to get us in touch with someone who was! Thirdly, the vet- If you’re going to man the phones for a vet’s office, you’d better damn well know how to get someone there without having them run all over the place. Those extra minutes being lost could’ve cost a life. And how dare they give us the impression someone was going to be there, waiting for us to arrive, when the doors were locked and the lights were out the whole time?!
We arrived back at the condo and I said, “Who has two thumbs and smells like pelican? This guy!”, and pointed at myself with my thumbs. It wasn’t funny, but made me feel better. Sure enough, Christy got a call from Fish & Wildlife asking where the injured bird was and when he could come out to get it. I changed clothes just in time for drunk Jesse and drunk Becky to coerce me into going swimming in the dark.
The waves were just as strong but so was the wind, which had changed its mood from cool and buoyant to bitter and cutting. Drunk Becky and drunk Jesse had fun for a minute or two but lost interest as the cold cut into their buzz. We all pulled out of the water and beat a hasty retreat up the cold, lunar sand and into the waiting warmth of the condo.
Christy and I finished watching Night of the Living Dead since it had come on again. It was good. We all ate chicken parmesan that Susi had prepared for us. It was delicious. Drunk Becky fell asleep and we all watched her sleep because she had her feet up in a chair, as if she was just lounging and not snoring. Drunk Jesse also fell asleep sitting up in a chair and began slowly pouring his mojo on the floor as the cup dipped in his relaxed grip. After getting up, Becky quickly fell asleep in her bed, after being directed away from the master bedroom and then the front door. Drunk Jesse moved to the couch, ousting Karen and Molly, and instantly fell asleep. After her catnap, Becky came out and joined us again. At around midnight we all said goodnight and went to bed.
Sunday came bright and cool. The wind had finally pushed out all the clouds, and the Gulf was a hard, deep blue that cut into the cornflower color of the sky. The girls were up, milling around, eating. We spent the morning hours watching television and straightening up the condo. Thanks to Paula Dean, Karen argued Molly argued over the appropriate amount of butter that should be used when cooking greens (a whole stick), and Molly retorted by saying she’s never had anything green at Karen’s house. Jesse had apparently disappeared in the night, because he was nowhere to be found.
I had to urge Christy to pack and get on the road. I think it was especially hard for her because Karen and Becky planned to stay well into the afternoon, and it made her jealous. Molly wanted to leave around lunchtime, too, because she had to get back to Columbus for a bible study that evening. We managed to get out of the condo and on the road at about one in the afternoon, Daylight Savings Time Eastern Standard One, and after gassing up got on the road.
Molly followed us back through the scatterings of random sandy towns until we reached Dothan, at which point Molly put her foot down and took off. It took all I had in the Saturn to keep up with her. Thanks to her, though, we made it back into Columbus by about four in the afternoon.
The rest of the evening we spent fighting with the plumbing and laziness. I developed a headache that made me sensitive to light and nauseous, so I turned off my video game and went to bed at about 9:30. That was our weekend.